Loretta Collins Klobah, Maria Grau Perejoan Sea Needs No Ornament/ El mar no necesita ornamento: A bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry by women writers of the English and Spanish-speaking Caribbean

Thirty-three poets from the English and Spanish-speaking Caribbean offer poems in a variety of forms and styles &; from free verse, formal, experimental, and exuberant to minimalist &; employing a range of language registers, including borrowings from children&;s ring games to blues rhythms. They speak in equally varied voices: lyrical, ironic, incensed, carnivalesque, meditative, and transgressive. Poems range over all aspects of women&;s lives, from childhoods of joy or sorrow, relationships with men and women, motherhood, elder years, as part of collectivities or in solitude. Poems focus on the female body as a source of self-knowledge, pleasure, strength, blood, invasion, and sometimes abuse. As Caribbean women, these poets scrutinize their places in the region&;s history and geography, including the intergenerational impact of migration; they celebrate or cast a critical eye over its spiritual traditions; decry the inequalities of class, race, gender, and sexuality; observe the region&;s abundance of flora, fauna and supernatural beings; and lament the catastrophic natural forces of earthquake, flood and hurricane that have battered its peoples, who yet search for new ways to revive and move forward.As Ilya Kaminsky writes: &;This book gives us some of the most passionate and insightful writing around, in any language&; as I look at the translated voices here I am both moved and transformed by the ways they seem to address the devastation of the present moment&; Spanish-speaking poets are presented with wonderful English-language poets. The result is a first-rate conversation between poetics, a marvel.&;