Refractions

by Octavio Armand

The word refractions evokes the subjects, techniques, and forms of this highly intensive collection. Eleven essays and eleven poems, each refracted from the other, display Armand's "passionate poetics" of reading and looking at the world of literature and art with the mind, eyes, and heart of an exiled writer. His topics vary from Kafka, the great Cuban writer Lezama Lima, Robert Morris, and tattoos as a test of personal identity to qualities of light and Van Gogh. But the true hero in this intriguing spectrum is Armand's style, which simultaneously discovers, invents, and draws the reader into a singular reality. Carol Maier's translation, undertaken in remarkable collaboration with the author, renders Armand's beautiful if sometimes wrenching vision in exacting refraction of her source. Together, Armand and Maier have created a major new work of Latin American literature in English.