Nancy Morejon. Looking Within: Selected Poems, 1954-2000 / Mirar Adentro: Poemas Escogidos, 1954-2000.

Nancy Morejon. Looking Within: Selected Poems, 1954-2000 / Mirar Adentro: Poemas Escogidos, 1954-2000. Edited with an introduction by Juanamaria Cordones-Cook Bilingual ed. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2003. 367 pp. $39.95 cloth/$24.95 paper.

"[??]Cual de estas mujeres soy yo?" the speaker of "Persona" asks on one page of Looking Within / Mirar Adentro and, on the page opposite, "Which of these women is me?" Her question is not merely rhetorical. Although it functions as a rhetorical device and as such provides the poem with an effective opening line in both Spanish and English, it also articulates the terms of an interrogation of identity that pervades the poems in this bilingual anthology: the investigation will not be conducted in the context of a narrowly defined individual self but in the far wider context of an individual self that looks within only to find without. For as the speaker asks her question, she stands at a window from which she sees women from two continents and various historical periods, all of whom bear her some resemblance and in each of whom she sees some resemblance to herself.

It is telling that this speaker never asks who am I ("Quien soy yo?"). Rather, her questions are, literally, which am I ("[??]Cual ... soy yo?") and "who are they, who look so much like me?" ("[??]Quienes son estas, que se parecen tanto a mi?") Instead, she describes the women who pass before her, presenting the reader with a portrait of her person as well as her persona (both of which are needed to translate fully the Spanish "persona"): a contemporary black Cuban woman with "a long origin," whose roots are in the subjugation suffered by the slaves brought to Cuba from Africa and in the oppression that the islanders suffered under Spanish colonialism. In addition, the speaker draws the reader into her questioning, implicitly addressing her reader as well as herself. By the time that she finds her identity within the complex body of another woman, the reader has been led to experience a similar perception of individuality as a complex intermingling of languages and cultures, of race, nation, gender, and class.

I have dwelt at length on "Persona" for two reasons. The first is the poem's role in Morejon's work. As David Frye, the translator of this poem, has explained in the University of Michigan's Journal of the International Institute, the poem is a relatively recent one (1999), but it is also an update of the earlier "Mujer negra" ("Black Woman"). "Black Woman" was written in 1974 and first published in 1975, the International Year of the Woman. That poem and "Amo a mi amo" ("I Love My Master") are the two poems by Morejon that have been most anthologized and for which she is best known. In those poems, the speaker is an African-Cuban woman. She speaks, in "Black Woman," of having been purchased "in a public square" in a distant land and of her work in this new place, where she "... brought in the crops / but never ate those harvests." However, like the speaker in "Persona," she speaks as one member of a collectivity, which in "Black Woman" spans a hundred years and includes the revolutionary who "came down from the Sierra / to put an end to capital and usurer / to generals and to bourgeois." In "I Love My Master," the speaker tells her individual story, but she also tells of an inner conflict between submissiveness and a desire for revenge prompted by a conversation among some guards she overheard talking in the field. Their comments alerted her to the "... lashings in the cauldrons of the sugar mill" for which her master is feared and loathed, and she begins to recognize, question, and resent the inequities of her own situation. She sees herself "... with knife in hand, butchering him like / innocent cattle."

"I Love My Master" is an angry, even violent poem, but it is also a poignant one because of the slave woman's deep ambivalence. As Juanamaria Cordones-Cook comments in her introduction to Looking Within / Mirar Adentro, the speaker's "fluctuation between complicity and resistance ... records the process of a gradual awakening." That awakening, in addition to the plurality of historical moments and languages and cultures that characterizes this poem, "Black Woman," and "Persona," exemplify well the characteristics for which Morejon and her work are known and admired. These traits include a strong identification with her family, with the working class, and with her African roots; an affirmation of what Cordones-Cook refers to as "a matrilineal consciousness"; a consistent commitment to the ideals of the Cuban Revolution, but one that does not preclude travel to the United States or the cultivation of close ties with Cubans, especially writers, who have left the island; a conviction that race and nation are inseparable and the belief that a similar inseparability binds language and culture; a complex aesthetic that has given rise to the nuanced and insightful body of work for which she has earned a reputation as "the most internationally successful and widely translated Cuban woman writer of the poet-revolutionary period" (Catherine Davies, The Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature).

The second reason for which I have stressed "Persona" is the poem's position in Looking Within / Mirar Adentro. Cordones-Cook has structured her anthology thematically, choosing selections from 10 of Morejon's 12 books of poetry and grouping the poems in seven sections by following "an undulating thematic rhythm" in Morejon's work. "Persona" is the final poem in "Mirar Adentro / Looking Within," the anthology's central section, around which the other six sections are arranged in a circular pattern. Although in each of those sections there is a distinct mood and tempo, all of the sections are interrelated, and in them all one can sense the woman who stands at the window in "Persona." That poem functions as a sort of hub: the first and final sections comprise poems that address aesthetics and writing; the poems in the second and sixth sections are poems of place (Cuba, Africa, the United States); the third and fifth sections include poems that treat melancholy and family. Despite the absence of any indication of chronology (none of the poems is identified by date or by the book from which it was drawn), the poems in sections two, three, and four seem to anticipate, either thematically or chronologically, those in the later sections to which they correspond. For instance, the poems of melancholy and nostalgia in section three are balanced by the warmth and affection of family in such poems as "La cena" / "Supper" from section six; and the brief, rather tentative poems in the first section contrast sharply with many of the poems in section seven, which, for the most part, are not only more accomplished but which contain allusions to a wide variety of writers, artists, and art forms.

The circular, thematic structure and the positioning of "Persona" reflect a thorough familiarity with Morejon's work on the part of Cordones-Cook. Working closely with Morejon, she has assembled an anthology that represents Morejon's entire production as a poet and offers a rich, moving, and informative reading experience. The poems are arranged so effectively that by reading them in the order in which they are presented, a reader comes to know Morejon as a person as well as a persona. This access to gradual insight does not mean that the description of Morejon's life and the comments about her work provided in the introduction or the terms defined in the glossary are not valuable. On the contrary, the introduction includes information about Morejon's contributions in areas other than poetry (as Cordones-Cook explains, she is also a "[c]elebrated essayist, critic, editor, journalist, and translator"), and they describe a Cuban context with which many non-Cuban readers might well be unfamiliar. In fact, the anthology would have been enriched by yet more information; for example, an appendix that listed for each poem the date of composition and the collection in which it was first published would be useful. It would also have been helpful to have a brief bibliography of interviews with Morejon and articles about her work that are available in English.

Another topic that it would have been appropriate for Cordones-Cook to include in her comments is translation. Morejon's poems present particular challenges to a translator. For instance, Frye has referred to "Persona" as "an odyssey of images" that were especially difficult to translate. He has also noted the strong representation of orality in her work as well as of allusions to persons, songs, and places specific to Cuba. He found helpful the highly rhythmic nature of her poetry and, like Cordones-Cook, he praises Morejon's willingness to consult with him about translation. Frye's work in the anthology is commendable, but he is only one of six translators whose work figures here, and the quality of the translations varies considerably. Although not all of Morejon's poems are of the high quality of "Persona," more than a few of the translations (some of which are of Morejon's most accomplished poems) do not read convincingly as poems in English. There is not space here to discuss the work of each translator, and there is some fine work indeed in the anthology. As a whole, the volume offers readers in both Spanish and English an opportunity to become acquainted in depth with the work of a poet who, as Ruth Behar has commented, "has opened bridges in many directions" (Bridges to Cuba / Puentes a Cuba). Morejon well deserves the many bridges that I hope Looking Within / Mirar Adentro will open for her.

Carol Maier

Kent State University