Caribe Mágico
Gabriel Garcí, Translated by a Má, rquez and Edith Grossman
Signs
Derek Walcott
The Room I Work In
Adam Zagajewski and Translated by Clare Cavanagh
A Natural History
Cristina Garcí and a
From Jonestown
Wilson Harris
Six Poems
Olive Senior
The Wolf, the Forest, and the New Man
Senel Paz, Zaida del Rí, Translated by o and Thomas Christensen
Mac Arthur’s Life
Ian McDonald
Two Poems
Kamau Brathwaite
Consuelo’s Letter
Julia Alvarez
From Dancing on Her Knees
Nilo Cruz
Two Stories
Juan Bosch and Translated by Mark Schafer
Five Songs (with an afterword by the translator, and notes by Gage Averill)
Translated by Mark Dow and Manno Charlemagne
The Day You See Me Fall Is Not the Day I Die
Bob Shacochis
Two Poems
Merle Collins
From Marina 1936
Translated by James Maraniss and Antonio Benítez-Rojo
From Eccentric Neighborhoods
Rosario Ferré
The Other
Arturo Uslar Pietri and Translated by Anabella Paiz
Three Poems
Adrian Castro
Two Prose Pieces
Severo Sarduy, Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Translated by Esther Allen
From Condolences
Edwidge Danticat
Prologue from The War of Knives
Madison Smartt Bell
Reggae Fi Bernard
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Axe and Anancy
Fred D’Aguiar
From Island Liturgies
Marlene Nourbese Philip
Coco’s Palace
Glenville Lovell
From Flickering Shadows
Kwadwo Agymah Kamau
Pyramid Chapel
Mark McMorris
From Palm of Darkness
Mayra Montero and Translated by Edith Grossman
The Sleeping Zemis
Lorna Goodison
A World of Canes
Robert Antoni
Cover art © 1993 by José Bedia: Si Se Pudiera (If only I could), acrylic on canvas. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida.
The history of that crescent of islands between Miami and Caracas seems archetypal and intimate, deeply expressive of human experience in all its spectrum of possibility. In this part of the world, so many cultures and languages have converged, clashed, synthesized, and resynthesized—a continuing process further complicated and enriched by their latter-day dispersion to every corner of the globe. We see the Caribbean as as much a state of mind, of history and politics, as of place. Its literatures—so kinetic and imaginative—are among the purest of its memories and documents. The Archipelago is our attempt to celebrate a small part of that vast experience.
Managing Editor
Conjunctions | Bard College
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