Guide to the Blue Tongue: POEMS (Illinois Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Virgil Suarez (Author)

Book Description

Series: Illinois Poetry Series | Publication Date: February 19, 2002

Shimmering with saturated color and heat, "Guide to the Blue Tongue" is an intoxicating sequence of memory poems about growing up in the tropics, threaded through the myth of Caliban from Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Caliban is the monstrous native, in love with what he cannot possess, lost to his own sense of identity. In Virgil Surez's vision, the island of Caliban's imprisonment merges with the island of Cuba, where the carboneros make charcoal and sell it door-to-door by the pound, young boxers crackle with caged energy, dock workers spill like ants out of the bellies of ships, and the rain falls in torrents on corrugated tin roofs. On this island of fire, the Marquis de Sade joins other historical figures to drink absinthe, and J. Edgar Hoover lingers over mojitos and a cigar at the Tropicana Night Club in Old Havana. Hovering behind the hotel shutters or half-concealed behind their masks, the old poets and prophets - Shakespeare, Tiresias, Pablo Neruda - are waiting to speak their passions. Out of this rich imaginative brew, Surez evokes the mythical and historical landscape of Cuba and distills the "hollow, deep-thudded pangs" of exile's rootlessness, the immigrant's constant longing to be possessed by a sense of place. Steeped in a seductive, incantatory language of desire, "Guide to the Blue Tongue" gives entry to a place of blue possibility and daily undoing, where the sting of salt-fresh air is compounded by the ache of displacement and loss.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Suarez approaches his homeland, Cuba, through the scrim of Shakespeare's The Tempest, conjuring a Caliban wise in the ways of weather who reads history in sunlight and shadow, wood and sand. Scarred, silent, and bedeviled by his unrequited love for the pale, protected Miranda, Suarez's suffering, beachcombing savage merges with the island itself to form the consciousness that flows within these richly descriptive, sometimes melancholy, sometimes surreal lyrics. Adept at creating coded images, Suarez conducts a plangent disquisition into the Caribbean's anguished past within concise musings on the sea, the business of vultures, the lives of palms, and the grim realities of a "ruined river" and a crumbling city. Elsewhere, a man sets out on an inner tube with the impossible dream of reaching Florida, and a boy dives for coins tossed by tourists. The poet remembers watching Godzilla movies in L.A. as a boy, and understanding that for his mother the real monster is "that island in the Caribbean we'd left behind." Suarez's poems of place and displacement are sensual, mythic, and quietly trenchant. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Surez 's suffering, beachcombing savage merges with the island itself to form the consciousness that flows within these richly descriptive, sometimes melancholy, sometimes surreal lyrics... Surez 's poems of place and displacement are sensual, mythic, and quietly trenchant." -- Booklist ADVANCE PRAISE "Virgil Surez is a poet of passion, energy, and amplitude. Words pour from him in a torrent. Jump into the flood of these poems. Enjoy the ride." -- Charles Harper Webb, author of Reading the Water

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (February 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025207050X
• ISBN-13: 978-0252070501
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,969,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare, Neruda, @ Other Masters, July 10, 2005

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MiamiPoetryLover (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guide to the Blue Tongue: POEMS (Illinois Poetry Series) (Paperback)

This book kicks serious literary butt. This collection is so good I've been enjoying it all year, and I hightly recommended for everyone interested in good poetry. Suarez has been making a loud impact with his work for several years now. High energy stuff. The last section of this book is my favorite because you can feel the departure from the personal toward the universal. It is myth-making at its best. Wonderful memorable poems. 100% magical and superb.