The Island Kingdom: A Homage to Homeland
by Sarah Escue
Cuban-American writer Pablo Medina is the author eight poetry collections, four novels, three books in translations, and a memoir. In his eighth collection of poetry The Island Kingdom (Hanging Loose Press, 80 pp,, $18 May 2015), Medina masterfully creates evocative imagery through lyric and narrative language, locating his poems in his native land of Cuba, America, and a Biblically inspired landscape. I admire how Medina surrenders to his poems’ wild urges, concedes to his restless imagination, and embraces his phantoms: his memories of childhood in Cuba, Walt Whitman, Matsuo Basho, Habana, Vallejo, his father, and more. Medina’s poetry invites the reader to enter, regardless of education, age, or ethnicity. The Island Kingdom pays homage to Medina’s homeland and his experience as a Cuban-American poet.
In the first section of the collection “Island History,” Medina begins with a poem titled “The Island Kingdom,” in which he writes of Cuba: “I wanted to stay next to her in bed, but I knew she could serve any master.” Throughout this collection, Medina roots his poems in the English and Spanish language, as well as memorializes his Cuban and American culture: “Agua de lila, lilac water, the cologne my grandfather wore on the island before he lost the farm, and now a bush by the door of my house in New Jersey smelling like him in the rain.” Medina meditates on his childhood in Cuba, his Cuban heritage, and his experience in America. He leads readers through time, forcing one to reflect on how her own or his own memory affects their present experience. Medina’s raw and fearless voice bridges the cultural, historical, and literary gap between Cuba and the Americas.
In the second section entitled “The Babylon Poems,” Medina creates a sacred space in which his obsessions and daemons reveal themselves. In “Saint of Conjecture,” Medina writes: “I, for example, melt daily. I get home and turn into an organic puddle, oh the carbon, the sodium, the chloride, oh the oxygen and hydrogen in that ménage á trois called water.” Medina allows his desires, obsessions, and fears to emerge from beneath the surface of his linguistic playfulness and vivid imagery. Medina’s spirited acts of surrender are fierce and establish an unflinching tone that resonates throughout the rest of the collection.
In the final section and nine-part poem entitled “The Elementaries,” Medina writes: “Allow me to dream: a forest, a lake, a house, you asleep in it…I’ve done three thousand poems, the oak has grown ten thousand leaves. Who cares?...Water dammed by wordlessness…I bark at nothing, never at being. God likes to play deaf and numb…White bird flying south. I bet you ten it gets there. I bet you ten it won’t.” Medina once again takes readers on an unfiltered journey through his psyche and offers his truths—a mystifying and dark space in which Medina allows himself to be vulnerable. Reading “The Elementaries” is like discovering a box of faded photographs beneath your bed—familiar, yet taunting in their obscurity.
Medina’s work has been translated in several languages, including Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. He has also received fellowships from the Oscar B. Cintas Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. Medina currently lives in Boston where he is a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College.
In the first section of the collection “Island History,” Medina begins with a poem titled “The Island Kingdom,” in which he writes of Cuba: “I wanted to stay next to her in bed, but I knew she could serve any master.” Throughout this collection, Medina roots his poems in the English and Spanish language, as well as memorializes his Cuban and American culture: “Agua de lila, lilac water, the cologne my grandfather wore on the island before he lost the farm, and now a bush by the door of my house in New Jersey smelling like him in the rain.” Medina meditates on his childhood in Cuba, his Cuban heritage, and his experience in America. He leads readers through time, forcing one to reflect on how her own or his own memory affects their present experience. Medina’s raw and fearless voice bridges the cultural, historical, and literary gap between Cuba and the Americas.
In the second section entitled “The Babylon Poems,” Medina creates a sacred space in which his obsessions and daemons reveal themselves. In “Saint of Conjecture,” Medina writes: “I, for example, melt daily. I get home and turn into an organic puddle, oh the carbon, the sodium, the chloride, oh the oxygen and hydrogen in that ménage á trois called water.” Medina allows his desires, obsessions, and fears to emerge from beneath the surface of his linguistic playfulness and vivid imagery. Medina’s spirited acts of surrender are fierce and establish an unflinching tone that resonates throughout the rest of the collection.
In the final section and nine-part poem entitled “The Elementaries,” Medina writes: “Allow me to dream: a forest, a lake, a house, you asleep in it…I’ve done three thousand poems, the oak has grown ten thousand leaves. Who cares?...Water dammed by wordlessness…I bark at nothing, never at being. God likes to play deaf and numb…White bird flying south. I bet you ten it gets there. I bet you ten it won’t.” Medina once again takes readers on an unfiltered journey through his psyche and offers his truths—a mystifying and dark space in which Medina allows himself to be vulnerable. Reading “The Elementaries” is like discovering a box of faded photographs beneath your bed—familiar, yet taunting in their obscurity.
Medina’s work has been translated in several languages, including Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. He has also received fellowships from the Oscar B. Cintas Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. Medina currently lives in Boston where he is a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College.
