Rumba Atop the Stones by Orlando Ricardo Menes

Gary Soto recommends
Rumba Atop the Stones, poems by Orlando Ricardo Menes: “There is lush music to Menes’s first book, and this lushness may arise from his subject, namely the Caribbean islands, particularly Cuba, his parents’ homeland. He writes of its populace-the dock worker, the sugar cane worker, the worker slaving at all trades-and the loveliness of the island’s ecosystems, along with its religions. These are bewitching poems with beguiling vocabulary-
kanawa, Wewee, Ochún, mayito, iyá, Yobu. In these words alone, we have the mystery of poetry.” (Peepal Tree)