Nicaraguan Peasant Poetry from Solentiname

David Gullette, tr.

These poems were collected and edited at Solentiname in Nicaragua in 1977 by the Venezuelan poet and workshop originator Mayra Jimenez.  The Solentiname colony was established on an island at the southern end of Lake Nicaragua in 1965. Father Ernesto Cardenal lived there for 12 years celebrating the Mass, teaching the Gospel, and encouraging the islanders to create paintings and poetry.  Then came the Sandinista revolution, in which Father Cardenal participated.  The poems written by the children and adults of Solentiname were saved, collected, and finally published in Managua in 1980.

Father Ernesto Cardenal decided in the middle 1970s that revolution in Nicaragua could not be peacefully achieved.  As a result, he occupied a difficult vocation, as priest, poet, and revolutionary.  Eventually, with the success of the revolution, he was appointed Minister of Culture in 1979. 

“The workshop in Solentiname . . . demonstrates how quickly and fruitfully the children of nature can attain, however fleetingly and even in war, that state of grace we call poetry.”—Allen Josephs, New York Times Book Review

It’s not that I’m fishing for your love with this poem
only that I want to trick your lips into smiling
because whatever movement you make at this very moment
that’ll be your answer
and if I fail to provoke even a single blink of your eyes,
right now, while this may be happening or not in the city,
here in the mountains a guerrilla troop
is drilling for the fight against Somoza’s Guardia;
and you, Silvia, will be inside me
at the hour of combat.
             —“When You See This Poem”, Iván Guevara

5½ x 8½ inches • 211 pages • ISBN 0-931122-48-1 • $12.95