“Coleman’s pitch-perfect translation comes to us at just the right time, with its themes as relevant now as at when the book was originally published in 1967. Through The Great Zoo, a guide describes what is being held captive in each cage, including a series of archetypes, places, abstractions, and things—moneylenders, the Caribbean, Ursa Major, orators, atomic bombs, etc. The cages allow for interrogation of destructive, racist, and absurd colonialist ideologies, and these poems vibrate with the possibility of an uprising, the dismantling of order. Adeptly echoing Guillén’s sly discourse around race, Coleman recovers a work by one of the most important Hispanophone writers of the twentieth century.”
— Rosa Alcalá, Phoenix Poets consulting editor and author of "MyOther Tongue"
“This is a tender warning for those entering The Great Zoo, a sparkling property built by the Caribbean poet Nicolás Guillén: Be careful. You may enter in search of both beauty and social justice, but the pleasures of these poems may tempt you to never leave.”
— Nancy Morejón, author of "Looking Within / Mirar adentro"
“The Great Zoo might evoke medieval bestiaries, or Borges’ fantastical bestiary, or even Neruda’s charming verse bestiary. But Guillén's hybrid humanimal/object-concept bestiary is a masterwork unto itself. Set in a hemispheric zoo, perhaps the Zoo of the {surreal and hyper-real} militarized Americas, each page takes us inside a cage where among the creatures we find: rivers, thirst, anthropomorphic hurricanes, police, money-lending bird-like things, and tiger-humans. Published in 1967, these poems could not feel more contemporary. In tone they are light and airy, yet the stakes could not be higher. Among the zoo’s inhabitants are the 'unsolvable problem' of the Ku Klux Klan; the atomic bomb; and 'the Yankee, taken back from Vietnam.' Good colonial prison that it is, The Great Zoo is a vector of nationalism, racist dehumanization, and imperialist violence. That it manages to also be funny as hell speaks to both Guillén's fiery vision, and Coleman's daring and dynamic translation. It’s no easy thing to translate humor amid the existential and colonial crises of the Americas. This is a powerful and important book.”
— Daniel Borzutzky, author of "Murmuring Grief of the Americas"
"Welcome to the menagerie of Guillén, where you stroll between cages showcasing beetles, tigers, giraffes, and phoenixes, but also the moon, a hurricane, and the whole Caribbean Sea. Hunger is 'An animal all fang and eye.' In his whittled-down, knife-sharp, yet always playful and often humorous language, Guillén takes on the police, the KKK, the Tonton Macoute, the unspeakable horror of a lynching, the 'barbaric danger' of the atomic bomb. You are left mulling over your own place in viewing these displays. Coleman's dazzling, idiomatic, and musical Afrodiasporic translation (his phrase) brilliantly gives fresh life to these essential poems. The Great Zoo invites English-language readers to discover the power and humor and wordplay of Guillén’s poetry, which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with that of the major Latin American poets of his moment like Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, César Vallejo, Oliverio Girondo, Julia de Burgos, Pedro Mir. Coleman's deft translation of this crucial collection is superb—and its arrival is an occasion to celebrate."
— Rachel Galvin, author of "Uterotopia"
“The Great Zoo is pure sui generis: quintessential verse by one of Cuba’s greatest poets. Coleman deftly brings all the humor and irony, all the searing social critique of this uncommon bestiary to a new English-reading audience. Yet he does so much more. In translating this iconic voice, Coleman heeds John Keene’s call to decenter hegemonic perspectives about Blackness and Black people, giving us a ‘truer and fuller sense’ of the Black diaspora and offering up a way to reconfigure ‘the world, our neighbors, our sisters and brothers, and ourselves.’ The Great Zoo is a true gift.”
— Katherine M. Hedeen, translator of "midnight minutes" by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
"Coleman has written a splendid translation of Guillén’s canonical book of poems. Redefining concepts such as creature, culture, capture, and menagerie, the poet and translator work with a deceptively light touch. Guillén’s vivid clarity, ingenuity, and musicality find their match in Coleman’s translation. Originally published in 1967, El gran zoo/The Great Zoo is as fresh and inventive today as it is politically hard-hitting."
— Marguerite Feitlowitz, author of "A Lexicon of Terror"