tasks/ tareas. Trad. Katherine M. Hedeen. Normal [IL]: Co.im.press, 2016.
finalist for Best Translated Book Award, 2017
finalist for National Translation Award, 2017
“. . . I’m / a phantom in this barbershop / mirrors eaten away by shadow” Víctor Rodríguez Núñez tells us in Katherine Hedeen’s magnificent translation. And later: “I linger in the snow a royal palm on my shoulder,” and still later: “identity lurks / like a forgotten ring in a public bathroom.” These poems are intimate and historic, woven of memory, inhabiting a space that invites the reader in. This is the voice of a mature poet, a Cuban straddling the century in which his country rose about him, lifting him on shoulders of discovery, loss and everything in between. Rodríguez Núñez is one of his generation’s most powerful poets, Tasks among his most satisfying books, and Hedeen’s English renderings nothing short of magical.”
–Margaret Randall
reviews:
by Olivia Lott in Empty Mirror
by Kelsi Vanada in Reading in Translation
by Daniel E. Pritchard in Medium