I Offer My Heart as a Target / Ofrezco mi corazón como una diana (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

Introducing the new winner of the Paz Prize for Poetry, given by the National Poetry Series, featuring an introduction by Rigoberto González, and presented in both Spanish and English.

Previous winners of the Paz Prize for Poetry include Miami Century Fox, by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias and translated by Eduardo Aparicio, Nine Coins/Nueve monedas, by Carlos Pintado and translated by Hilary Vaughn Dobel, and Colaterales/Collateral by Dinapiera Di Donato and translated by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado.

Translated by Lawrence Schimel.

From the introduction by Rigoberto González:

A regular heartbeat is composed of the two sounds made when the blood flows through the organ as the valves contract. To listen to its rhythm through a stethoscope is to appreciate the slight distinction between two movements that are unequivocally connected—one beat calls, the other responds. Similarly, the two sections of Johanny Vázquez Paz’s stunning book of poems offer the reader distinct tones powered by the same source: perseverance . . .

I Offer My Heart as a Target is a book of victory over silence and the truest testament to what it means to outlive that which has defeated or deflated many. If there’s a spirit guiding the courage embedded in its pages, it must be the phoenix, the miraculous being that rises from the ashes reborn, or rather, pieced together again. The heart beats once more. The woman reclaims the word.

The Paz Prize for Poetry is presented by the National Poetry Series and The Center for Writing and Literature at Miami Dade College and is awarded biennially. Named in the spirit of the late Nobel Prize–winning poet Octavio Paz, it honors a previously unpublished book of poetry written originally in Spanish by an American resident.