Publicado originalmente en 1988, Carece de causa es hoy uno de los principales poemarios de Jose Kozer (La Habana, Cuba, 1940), escritor fundamental de la lirica hispanica contemporanea. En este cuaderno, que por vez primera aparece en edicion bilingue, se advierten rasgos importantes de la poetica de su autor: la imbricacion de la tradicion hebrea, la cultura cubana y el sustrato zen; la condicion transterrada del sujeto poetico; el debate cultural -y existencial- a partir de nociones como identidad, nacion, religion y diaspora; el imaginario simbolico de la familia como elemento vertebrador; la cotidianidad trascendente y mitificada; la recuperacion de la memoria en sus mas plurales significaciones… Los poemas aqui reunidos son tambien un ejemplo paradigmatico del meticuloso trabajo de Kozer con el espanol, su lengua poetica por excelencia: la voluntad de experimentacion, la diversidad de registros y un abundante repertorio lexico lo caracterizan. De ahi que la traduccion al ingles, realizada por Peter Boyle, multiplique aun mas las repercusiones exegeticas y culturales de estos versos.

Originally published in 1988, No Known Cause is one of the main titles by Jose Kozer (Havana, Cuba, 1940), a fundamental writer of contemporary Hispanic poetry. This book, which now appears for the first time in a bilingual edition, reveals significant features of Kozer’s ars poetica, such as the interweaving of the Hebrew tradition with the Cuban culture and the Zen substratum, the expatriate condition of the lyrical subject, the cultural and existential debate based on notions such as identity, nation, religion and diaspora, the symbolic imagery around the central axis of family, the mythicizing of everyday life, the recovery of memory in its most plural meanings… The poems collected in this book are also a paradigmatic example of Kozer’s meticulous work with Spanish language, his poetic language par excellence, a work characterized by the will to experiment, the diversity of registers and the richness of its lexical repertoire. Accordingly, the English translation by Peter Boyle multiplies the exegetical and cultural impact of the verses contained in this book.