Thanks to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press for the ARC!

Aaron Coleman’s excellent new translation of Nicolás Guillén’s "The Great Zoo" asks readers to question the difference between conservation and incarceration.

Poetry in translation always wrestles with itself, but Coleman has a great sense of how to navigate the tension, offering straightforward interpretations that feel like a thematic extension of the conversation Guillén hosts.

Readers don’t need to know much about Cuban history to enjoy this book, but I’m sure it would enrich the reading. Guillén’s organizing image of a zoo is really effective, allowing him to explore a range of racial and anti-colonial themes. These are brief poems, which makes the reader uncomfortably aware of their own voyeuristic impulses—we see only select angles of the caged subjects, and it’s frustrating to recognize that even in this contained form, they cannot be pinned down. We must ask what something becomes when it’s mediated by iron bars. Guillén dares readers to approach these poems as entertainment before implicating them, and the result is a collection that burrows into one's mind.

A great book!! Read carefully because here.are two versions of the poems on the same page. One in English and the other in Spanish. I have not ever read these kinds of poems. These are not your everyday poems. Its quite interested but it makes you really think. Are.the poems talking about animals or something else. I loved it and would read again.

I received a free copy of the book and is voluntarily writing a review