"'English outside this door, Spanish inside, he said', 'y basta.' But who can divide the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from any child?"

Rhina Espaillat's understanding of the division of linguistic and cultural differences that so shaped her writing life are best cultivated in her book, "Mundo y Palabra, the World and the Word."

The first four poems are offered in both Spanish and English. "Resignaci??n" ("Resignation") is composed of two six-line, octosyllabic stanzas wherein rhyme and reflection are artfully expressed. She uses an image of a river carrying her soul which is no longer hard-as-stone resistant to fate. A grain of sand on the road of life is what she declares her soul now to be, just as eternal as Thoreau's.

Old-world naturalism challenges new age space technology in "Para mi tartaranieto el astropionero" ("My great-grandson the space pioneer"). She describes the boy being thrown into the future from her own blood, or being the next stage of human development in her lineage. She doesn't warn him of danger or forbid him to leave this tactile world but reminds him to treasure and bring with him the natural sights and sounds that make life complete. She asks him where he has left the rain. He should be careful not to lose it and its ability to rejuvenate him even though he is now no longer a boy. Then she assures him of her love and ensures that she will leave him with the familiar scent of the ocean, the all-forgiving, cleansing ocean.

Crisp, comic and ceramic-colored are the verses in her English poems. Espaillat's insight and irony are sewn together in the poem entilted "Bra" that likens the support garment to its sweatshop beginnings, where under-paid, oppressed workers stitched it to a "perfect fit." She wonders how young the worker was and who she had to support to earn the few meager pesos politics have dictated.

"Bodega" is a must-read simply for the escape to a tropical, vibrant country it provides in the guise of a four-stanza poem evoking spicy smells and steamy sights. In a classic structure of seven-syllables per line, Rhina uses her poetic imagery to place us in her childhood memories and allow us to reminisce about our own simple pleasures of home. And with a brilliant bilingual poet, there's no sense of anything lost in translation.

The first line in this review is from "Bilingual / Biling??e," in which she shares her account of growing up in a bilingual family. This work speaks particularly to her father, with whom she shared the most difficulty over her double-spoken life. The reverence she holds for him is warm and touching, as are the verses themselves. One can almost forgive one's own family difficulties from the past by seeing the pride of her poetry through her father's eyes.