Maraca

Poetry by Victor Hernández Cruz

October 1, 2001 • 7 x 10 • 300 pages • 978-1-56689-122-6

A colorful, percussive collection spanning thirty-five years.

At the age of nineteen Victor Hernández Cruz exploded onto the national poetry scene with his dazzling debut, Snaps. Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000 is a sumptuous collection representing over thirty-five years of poetic evolution from one of America’s most exhilarating poets, featuring work from long out-of-print works, including Papo Got His Gun, Snaps, Mainland, Tropicalization, By Lingual Wholes, and Rhythm, Content & Flavor.

About the Author

Victor Hernández Cruz is the author of several collections of poetry including The Mountain in the Sea and In the Shadow of Al-Andalus. Featured in Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series, Cruz’s collection Maraca was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.

Reviews

“A fluent sensualist and rhythmic stylist. . . . [Cruz] is often invoked as a revered forerunner and seminal influence on the Nuyorican poetry movement.” —Washington Post

“Wit, insight, and faith in the survival of a human universe combine.” —Anselm Hollo

“Tough, lyrical, rhythmic, lush, dead-pan funny and dead-pan beautiful.” —Jessica Hagedorn

“What would be treacle in the hands of lesser souls in quirky and utterly lovely in Cruz’s.” —Voice Literary Supplement