Man-Making Words: Selected Poems

by Nicolás Guillén, David A. McMurray, Roberto Márquez (Editor)

The Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, who was born in the eastern province of Camaguey in 1902, died in 1989. This new edition of his selected poems, reissued thirty years after its original publication, includes an extensive new introductory essay by Roberto Marquez, one of the original translators and a leading authority on Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture.

Genres: Poetry, Spanish Literature, Fiction, Latinx

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1972

About the author

Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.

Guillén was born in Camagüey, Cuba. He studied law at the University of Havana, but he soon abandoned a legal career and worked as a typographer and journalist.

His poetry was published in various magazines from the early 1920s and his first collection, Motivos de son, appeared in 1930. West Indies, Ltd., published in 1934, was Guillén's first collection of poetry with political implications.[2] Cuba's dictatorial Machado regime had been overthrown in 1933, but political repression in the following years intensified. In 1936, with other editors of Mediodía, Guillén was arrested on trumped-up charges, and spent some time in jail. In 1937 he joined the Communist Party and made his first trip abroad–to attend a Congress of Writers and Artists in Spain. During his travels in the country he covered Spain's Civil War as a magazine reporter.
Guillén returned to Cuba via Guadeloupe. He stood as a Communist in the local elections of 1940. The following year he was refused a visa to enter the United States, but he travelled widely over the next twenty years – in South America, China and Europe. Guillén's poetry was increasingly becoming imbued with issues of cross-cultural Marxist dialectic. He was prevented by the Batista government from entering Cuba in 1953, but was welcomed back by Fidel Castro after the revolution, becoming appointed president of the Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba–the National Cuban Writers' Union–in 1961. He also wrote some evocative and poignant poetry highlighting social conditions, such as "Problemas de Subdesarrollo" and "Dos Niños". He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954, which was later renamed for Lenin under de-Stalinization and also the Laureate Of The International Botev Prize in 1976. He was the inaugural winner of Cuba's National Prize for Literature (1983).

Nicolás Guillén died in 1989 at age 87 and was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. His nephew was experimental Cuban filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938–2003).

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. After reading the first couple poems in this collection, knowing nothing at all about Guillén beyond his name, my first thought was: these sound like Langston Hughes. Sure enough, Guillén was not only influenced by Hughes, but was also befriended and championed by the American poet. But Guillén soon moves away from that Hughes-inspired voice as the middle and later poems in this collection ring with a strong spirit of resistance and revolution – some of the strongest I have read that give voice to the Latin American experience in the mid-twentieth century.

The central poems include elegies for murdered black men in the Caribbean and U.S, including Emmett Till, which connects these voices to the black experience in the United States. I’m not sure why Guillén isn't better known in the States – or, more to the point, required reading in both literature and history texts in high schools. He should be.

If one starts to think these poems are relics from a past era, with their references to McCarthy, Che, Sputnik, and United Fruit, the final poem in the collection, “Angela Davis,” reminds us that Guillén’s voice is still of vital importance in the contemporary Americas.

[Lo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of Nicolás Guillén’s poetry. No wonder he is the poetic namesake of Cuba and his only contemporary equal was Langston Hughes. His growth throughout his life shows the way he channeled the rage of America, capitalism, and racism into something beautiful. His anger was always there, but the beauty developed throughout his works.

You can see this in “Little Rock” with it opening with “Little black children pass through pedagogical rifles/to their school of terror.” “Jim Crow will be their teacher,/sons of Lynch their playmates;” but he ends on reserved and defiant hope. A world where this doesn’t have to be the case and the Yankees method of rule won’t last.

My favorite poem is “Elegy for Jesús Menéndez” where again Guillén’s spark and art isn’t sullied by his patriotic feelings, rather ignites because of it. He wants to relish and love Jesús while calling out the ills of what killed him. I give credit to the translators that can express his talent and poise. Though they take many liberties, they are mostly correct, I think, in their interpretation.

“Jesús [and I’d add all of our compañeros] [are] not in Heaven, but on earth; he asks not prayers, but struggle; he wants no priests, but brothers; he founds no temples, only unions; They cannot kill him.” Because someone fighting for the liberation of all does not die, his comrades just carry his waiving flag forward. “He walks about his island, but also goes abroad on a grand ship of fire.”

[Frank Karioris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delight. What an impressive berth of poems and poetics in this selections book. The Elegy series is especially brilliant.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently only 28 people on Goodreads have read this book. This is a disservice to the sheer quality of the poetry on display here. If you like poetry do yourself a favor and track down a copy of this book. Guillen is a giant of Latin American literature and even in translation his words shine. Great poetry.

[genn · Rating 5 out of 5]

enjoy guillen rhythm ...read this when i was taking carribean poetry and writing my thesis....mayombe sensemaya....

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poetry in Spanish is amazing. The translation is... not so wonderful.