GARDEN OF EXILE

paper 1-889330-33-7 During the twentieth century, nationalism replaced imperialism and capitalism beat communism. Free verse supplanted meter and rhyme, abstraction superseded figurative art, and the politics of identity replaced commonality in our increasingly isolated lives. While experience as a Cuban ÇmigrÇ, an artist, a formalist, and a lesbian shapes Rodriguez’s writing, she is a craftsperson who has carefully structured this first collection—winner of the 1998 Katherine A. Morton Prize. The poems and prose poems cumulatively tell autobiographical stories, explore types of exile that only she knows and that we all know, and create a stylish milieu for the California plein-air paintings she enjoys—including historically appropriate music, movies, fashion, and household items. Rodriguez meets her subject matter as an adult: directly, with sophistication. Individually, the pieces, written in English with some Spanish, talk about and employ language formally. Her interests in language itself, linguistics, and bilingualism serve as background for rhyme schemes she deploys transparently. Fairfield Porter, jazz, and painting are used not in “I did this, I did that” New York School’style, but in Angeleno poems where both dislocation and brightly colored landscapes seem natural. While these poems will surely be popular with various identity politicos, Rodriquez has raised them above the mean with an intelligent and appealing sense of art and craft.