animal fiero y tierno / fierce and tender animal

Author: Ángela María Dávila

Publisher: Centro Press (2026)

animal fiero y tierno is a powerful lyric collection, where the “I”, as it remains deeply intimate, becomes nonetheless a collectivity, a relation of multiple solitudes. The voice, the hands, the belly, the pinkie finger, are also a dove and a lizard, a blue sun, a globe of earth, animal and light. Originally published in 1977 (Editorial QueAce, Puerto Rico), it has never been translated into English. Roque Raquel Salas Rivera’s translation retains the force of Ángela’s involving rhythm, the delicate combination of the expressive and the colloquial in the language, and makes it resound, fierce and tender, in new Anglophone ears. CENTRO Press is overjoyed and honored to launch its new collection, Puerto Rican Literature in Translation, with this remarkable work of poetry and translation.