On Thursday, Feb. 27, Barry University’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English and Foreign Language hosted renowned poet, and South Florida’s own, Ricardo Pau-Llosa for a reading and discussion of his new book, “Man.”
Pau-Llosa is one of South Florida’s most widely published poets. “Man,” published with Carnegie Mellon University Press, continues his poetic journey through the world of myth, philosophy, art, and history. The book’s poems are rich in metaphor and narrative and focus on the role of the imagination in everyday life by drawing parallels between occurrences in the life of a secular Everyman and a wide range of Biblical images, parables, and events.
Pau-Llosa was born in Cuba in 1954 but has lived in the United States since he was six. In addition to his writing, he is a distinguished art critic and curator, specializing in modern and contemporary Latin American art. His previous poetry titles — “Sorting Metaphors” (1983), “Bread of the Imagined” (1992), “Cuba” (1993), “Vereda Tropical” (1999), “The Mastery Impulse” (2003), and “Parable Hunter” (2008) — demonstrate the development of his ideas about myth, the power of tropes (e.g. metaphor and metonymy), the challenges of exile, and the joyous benefits of living a genuine and profound cosmopolitan existence.
For more information on Pau-Llosa, visit his website, www.pau-llosa.com.