Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Women's Studies. Edited by Nancy Alonso and Katherine Hedeen. Translated by Jeffrey C. Barnett. "These verses and prose poems offer difficult, hermetic verbal snapshots of Cuba—ironic and anguished but not without hope. One of Cuba's leading recent poets, Zurelys López Amaya's FLOCKS/REBAÑOS, constitutes the first full-length translation of one of her works into English. Recognized for its refreshing and unusual style, readers may find the poetic selections in FLOCKS/REBAÑOS to be polemical, on the one hand, and yet serene and detached on the other. In her prose poems, López Amaya finds sufficient space to develop the traditional allegory of the pastor and his flock, an extended metaphor that may lead the reader to consider disturbing questions about modern-day Cuba. As she portrays a society amassed in a pasture hopelessly waiting for an absent shepherd, her poems always lead our eye back to the flock, or rather the Cuban people. In doing so, she puts forth a complex and ambivalent view, one that is an instinctual lament but also one which finds solace in poetry. Despite the work's poignant socio-political insight, López Amaya's poetry is not limited to social thesis. Instead, she offers a rich and complex view of her world, all the while embracing simplicity and pondering aesthetic wonder. Throughout her poems we find a wide array of emotion, including empathy, loneliness, nostalgia, remorse, longing, and love. In short, whether posing disturbing images about her socio- political milieu or celebrating the mundane, FLOCKS/REBAÑOS provides the reader with a gestalt view of the poet's daily life, a vision that on the one hand is inextricably tied to Cuba, while on the other a vision that extends beyond the island to summon the universal."—Jeffrey C. Barnett