About the Author

One of the most influential and controversial poets of his generation, Nicaraguan Ernesto Cardenal (b. 1925) is widely acknowledged as the greatest living poet of Latin America. Poet, priest, polemicist, liberation theologian, founder of the Solentiname primitivist art community, Nicaraguan Minister of Culture in the first Sandinista Government, 1979-87, Cardenal, in poetry which is both epic and lyrical, presents a vision of the social, political, historical and natural worlds of Latin America.