From Eves Rib

For Gioconda Belli, a woman's sexuality and female identity are inseparable from an expansive and nurturing love of the world. In her poetry, the longing for a society in which people construct a future together is animated by an inextinguishable erotic, maternal, and transcendental loving desire. The poetry in FROM EVE'S RIB, a selection that includes Belli's early as well as recent work, is revolutionary in that it links an intense eroticism with the insurrectionary spirit of the Nicaraguan people."Her poetry [is] at once extremely sensual and politically direct...a kind of public love-poetry that [comes] closer...to expressing the passion of Nicaragua than anything I ever heard." --Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile (Penguin, 1987)"Her lessons in eroticism and her deeply engaged social conscience and her feminism, her historical perspective and her personal, passionate imagination have marked her poems with the indelible hand print of originality." --American Book Review

"From Eve's Rib" is a collection of poetry by Gioconda Belli of Nicaragua. Her work has been translated into English by Steven F. White. This is a bilingual edition, with the Spanish originals and English versions on facing pages.Belli's voice is passionate, lusty, sensual, tender, and politically aware. Many of her poems are woman-centered; she writes about menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, physical love, and pride in being a woman. Many poems deal with the Nicaraguan revolution and its aftermath. One of the best poems in the collection, "The Dream Bearers," is a prophetic poem of hope in which Belli celebrates those who dream "not of the world's destruction, / but of building a world of butterflies / and nightingales." Also memorable is "Conjunction," in which Belli reflects on the women writers of past generations. This is a fine collection of poetry that I enthusiastically recommend, particularly to those with an interest in women's studies or Latin American literature.