Ernesto Cardenal - Böcker

In 1898 Tahirassawichi went to Washington"only to speak about religion"(as he told the American government)only to preserve the prayers.And the Capitol did not impress him."—from "Tahirassawichi in Washington" Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan poet, priest, and revolutionary, foresees a new order for humanity. Here in his Indian poems, Father Cardenal interweaves myth, legend, history, and contemporary reality to speak to many subjects, including the assaults on the Iroquois Nation, the political and cultural life of ancient Mexico, the Ghost Dance movement, the disappearance of the buffalo, U.S. policy during the Vietnam War, and human rights in Central America. Each text is rich with history, poetry, and spiritual insight.This bilingual edition is the only complete collection of Father Cardenal's Indian poems in either Spanish or English. Cardenal has checked and approved the translations and the glossary of cultural and historical referents."Of epic proportions . . . The literal translation conveys the epigrammic style and didactic, political message. . . . Of timely interest." —Library Journal"Priest and Nicaraguan revolutionary as well as poet, Cardenal epitomizes what makes literature live in Central America today. His poems are both sonorous and accessible, political and mystical." —Booklist" . . . a spectacular work . . ." —Books of the South West

" . . . very well translated . . . Cardenal merits praise for presenting, on such an ambitious scale, a passionate alternative history of the Spanish encounter with Central America." —Booklist"Combining hsitory with poetry, Cardenal exposes the violence, treachery, injustice, and exploitation that are so much a part of [Central America and Mexico's] past and present." —World Literature Today"Explore this dense, beautiful poem and you will be rewarded with riches that 'delight and hurt not'." —Nicaragua Update". . . a remarkable text. . . . El estrecho dudoso is a masterful and compelling poetic account of early colonial Central America, and the translation is likewise masterful." —Colonial Latin American Historical ReviewIn this book-length poem, Nicaraguan priest and revolutionary Ernesto Cardenal tells the story of the Spanish conquest of Central America from the "discovery" of the American continent to recent historical events. A remarkable achievement and an engrossing narrative, the poem is published here in both Spanish and English.

Cardenal, In Cuba. The Nicaraguan Poet-Priest muses over Cuba

Apocalypse and Other Poems by Nicaragua’s revolutionist poet-priest, Ernesto Cardenal, is the author’s second book, the first of poetry, to be published by New Directions. The editors of this volume, Robert Pring-Mill and Donald D. Walsh, have chosen a representative selection of Cardenal’s shorter protest poems, epigrams, religious, and Amerindian verse. Also included are two of Cardenal’s most impressive longer works: the haunting and melodic elegy, “Coplas on the Death of Merton,” and the title poem, “Apocalypse,” in which the theme of an ever-threatening nuclear holocaust is the core of a modern rendering of the Book of Revelations. At Our Lady of Solentiname, his religious community on an island in Lake Nicaragua, living and working in the manner of the early Christians, Father Cardenal embodies what he professes: “Now in Latin America, to practice religion is to make revolution.” An informative introduction has been contributed by Robert Pring-Mill of Oxford University. The translations are by Thomas Merton, Robert Pring-Mill, Kenneth Rexroth and Mireya Jaimes-Freyre, and Donald D. Walsh, who also translated In Cuba, Cardenal’s assessment of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary society, published by New Directions in 1974.

Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems brings together in English translation eight of the longer poems by Nicaragua’s impassioned Marxist priest, Ernesto Cardenal, described in the Times Literary Supplement as “the outstanding socially committed poet of his generation in Spanish America.” His work, like Pablo Neruda’s, is unabashedly political; like Ezra Pound’s, his poems demonstrate history on an epic scale––but the voice is all his own and speaks from the heart of a land sunk for generations in poverty, oppression, and turmoil. As both activist and contemplative, Cardenal maintained strong ties with the Sandinist guerillas while at the same time living a form of primitive Christianity at his religious settlement of Our Lady of Solentiname on an island in Lake Nicaragua. In late 1977, amid increasing civil violence, the Nicaraguan National Guard utterly destroyed the Solentiname community, and Cardenal fled to neighboring Costa Rica, where he continued his efforts on behalf of the revolutionary movement. With the final collapse of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, he returned to Nicaragua as his country’s new Minister of Culture. Spanning a quarter century, the poems in Zero Hour constitute a vivid record of continuous struggle against flagrant exploitation and brutal indifference to common humanity.