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memorably expressed the pain he felt at Cuba’s subjugation by Spain in one of his most famous poems, “Dos patrias” (“Two Homelands”). The Nobel Prize–winning Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz said that poem “condenses [the] whole move- ment [of modernismo ] and announces, too, the arrival of con- temporary poetry” (the excerpt here is translated by William Little of Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida):

I have two lands: Cuba and the night. Or are they only one? No sooner Does the long-veiled majestic sun set Holding a carnation in one hand than Does Cuba, like a widow, appear to me. I know what that blood-red carnation is That’s trembling in its hand. It is empty, My chest is destroyed, and empty too Where my heart used to be. It’s time To begin dying. The night is good For saying good-bye.

Nicolás Guillén: Champion of Afro-Cubanism

One of the foremost representatives of a literary and cultural movement known as Afrocubanismo , or Afro-Cubanism, Nicolás Guillén would come to be regarded as the national poet of Cuba. He ranks among Latin America’s most celebrated writers.

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Arts and Literature of Cuba