Antologia Clave.

Santiago, Chile Biblioteca Popular Nascimento, 1971. Paperback Very Good+ in Wraps: shows indications of very careful use: mildest rubbing to wrapper covers; the pages have tanned rather heavily, due to aging; binding leans a little but remains perfectly secure; text clean. Remains close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 12mo. 194pp. Prologue by Luis Iñigo Madrigal. Paperback. Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (1902 – 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba. Born in Camagüey, he studied law at the University of Havana, but abandoned a legal career and worked as a typographer and journalist. His poetry was published in various magazines from the early 1920s; his first collection, Motivos de son (1930) was strongly influenced by his meeting that year with the African-American poet, Langston Hughes. He drew from son music in his poetry. West Indies, Ltd., published in 1934, was Guillén's first collection with political implications. Cuba's dictatorial Gerardo Machado regime was overthrown in 1933, but political repression intensified. After being jailed in 1936, Guillén joined the Communist Party the next year, traveling to Spain for a Congress of Writers and Artists, and covering the Spanish Civil War as a magazine reporter. After returning to Cuba, he stood as a Communist in the local elections of 1940. This caused him to be refused a visa to enter the United States the following year, but he traveled widely during the next decades in South America, China and Europe. In 1953, after being in Chile, he was refused re-entry to Cuba and spent five years in exile. He returned after the successful Cuban revolution of 1959. From 1961 he served more than 25 years as president of the Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba, the National Cuban Writers' Union. His awards included the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954, the 1976 International Botev Prize, and in 1983 he was the inaugural winner of Cuba's National Prize for Literature. Guillén drew from his mixed African and Spanish ancestry and education to combine his knowledge of traditional literary form with firsthand experience of the speech, legends, songs, and songs of Afro-Cubans in his first volume of poetry, "Motivos de son". It was soon acclaimed as a masterpiece and widely imitated. In the 1920s, when Afro-Cuban sounds and instruments were changing the world of Cuban music, Afro-Cuban culture began to be expressed in art and literature as well. Initially, Afro-Cuban poetry, or "negrista" poetry, was mainly published by European Cubans such as Emilio Ballagas, Alejo Carpentier, and José Tallet. It was not until the 1930s that Guillén would appeal in literary terms by expressing a personal account of the struggles, dreams, and mannerisms of Afro-Cubans. Guillén became outspoken politically, and dissatisfied with picturesque portrayal of the daily life of the poor. He began to decry their oppression in his poetry volumes Sóngoro cosongo and West Indies Ltd. Guillen also wrote Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas, which reflected his growing political commitment. Guillén is probably the best-known representative of the "poesía negra" ("black poetry"), which tried to create a synthesis between black and white cultural elements, a "poetic mestizaje". Characteristic for his poems is the use of onomatopoetic words ("Sóngoro Cosongo", "Mayombe-bombe") that try to imitate the sound of drums or the rhythm of the son. Silvestre Revueltas's symphonic composition Sensemayá was based on Guillén's poem of the same name, and became that composer's best known work. Guillén later became acknowledge by many critics as the most influential of those Latin American poets who dealt with African themes and re-created African song and dance rhythms in literary form. Guillen made an international mark with the publication of Motivos de son (1930). The work was inspired by the living conditions of Afro-Cubans and the popular son music. The work consists of eight short poems using the everyday language of the Afro Cubans. The collection stood out in the literary world because it emphasized and established the importance of Afro-Cuban culture as a valid genre in Cuban literature. Son initiated the fusion of black and white Cuban culture. Guillén's incorporation of the genre into his writings, symbolized and created a pathway for the same cultural fusion in Cuban literature. Guillén's unique approach of using the son in his poetry is expressed in his book "Sóngoro consongo" (1931). In this work, Guillén included poems that depicted the lives of Cubans and emphasized the importance of Afro-Cuban culture in Cuban history. "Sóngoro consongo" captures the essence of the Afro-Cuban culture and ways that the people deal with their personal situations.