When you come across a line like “poems that rhyme have always seemed monotonous to me” in a book of poetry, one can’t help but snicker. When you read that line in a book filled with structured rhyming sonnets, you begin to question if the poet knows what they are writing. Rest assured, Legna Rodriguez Iglesias is very much aware of the rhyming structure of her poems in her latest book Miami Century Fox — winner of the 2016 Paz Prize for Poetry — which are not at all monotonous but rather: witty, ironic, humorous, and at times, deeply sad.

Rodriguez Iglesias, winner of the 2011 Premio Iberoamericano de Cuentos Julio Cortázar and the 2016 Premio Literario Casa de Las Américas, has previously authored poetry collections, such as Hilo + Hilo, Dame Spray, Transtucé, and Chicle (ahora es cuando), as well as novels and short stories. Miami Century Fox works with similar themes and ideas as her other poems, dealing with love and the body, as well as problems of immigration and identity, as Rodriguez Iglesias herself is a Cuban-American. Not only does she examine love and relationships, she also brings it back to the difficulty Latino immigrants face when integrating into a new society, to the difficulty of feeling at home in a place that is fighting to remove you. Rodriguez Iglesias does not fall into the trap of romanticizing Miami, and instead, Miami ends up becoming a character itself, with its own complexities and difficulties, a character that houses a varied and colourful peoples.

The format of the book helps to show the conversation between the original Spanish poems and their English counterparts, with Spanish text filling the left pages and translated English text filling the right pages. The introduction to Miami Century Fox meditates on whether or not the translations work, due to the unique nature of Romance languages and English. And while it’s certain that translation is not a perfect science, translator Eduardo Aparicio makes great work of capturing the sonnet structure of the original poems while also retaining the messages and ideas. For readers that are fluent in Spanish and English, being able to compare the work in both languages, adds another layer and dimension to the experience of reading the work.

That being said, there are times that Aparicio uses literal translations of words, making some of the English versions sound awkward. In “El día que a mi novia le empezaron a doler las muelas / The Day My Girlfriend’s Molars Started Hurting,” the word molar is used in the Spanish title of the poem, sounding natural to any Spanish speaker. For myself, a Colombian native, the natural translation of the word “muelas” would be teeth, as it is not always specific to molars. This makes the English title of the poem sound slightly unnatural, where the word teeth would have been more appropriate. Regardless of certain translations that seem odd at times, for the most part the translations work seamlessly, providing English readers with as close to an authentic experience of reading the poems in Spanish as they can get.

Beyond the conversation that occurs between the English and Spanish poems, each poem is structured in a two-part format where Rodriguez Iglesias writes meditative epigraphs to preface each poem. Oftentimes the epigraphs explain the poems that follow, other times they provide a space for Rodriguez Iglesias to meditate on the reasoning and process behind her book. While these epigraphs are not set in any specific structure or rhyme scheme, like her sonnets, they help to show-off Rodriguez Iglesias’s capacities in both free verse and traditional styles.

Readers of this book, whether in Spanish, English, or both, can find something special in these snapshots of life’s random moments. Whether it be sitting in a café cutting a croissant into pieces and realizing you do not love him anymore, to walking through Whole Foods and understanding that the items housed inside cannot fill the hunger that poetry and writing satiate. Rodriguez Iglesias’s quirky and silly tone makes for a funny and relatable read, challenging the commonly-held belief that poetry is difficult and only for “academic” or “artsy” people. For others, like myself, hearing from a Latina woman that is unapologetically authentic and funny provides a much-needed healthy representation of our culture that helps to dispel the misconceptions. We are not criminals or bad hombres, we are lovers and dreamers and complex human beings, in Miami, and beyond.