Nicolás Guillén is one of the leading twentieth-century Spanish American poets. His work as an essayist and journalist has also won him acclaim. This work complements his poetry, reinforcing its principal themes and his indisputable opposition to racial discrimination, his championing of the racial and cultural mixtures that form the Cuban nation, and his revulsion at slavery, at its intimate association with colonialism and its kinship with imperialism. He also manifests in his work pride in and loyalty to the Cuban Revolution, and he has written superb love poetry. Because he managed in his poetry over a period of some five decades to treat the salient features of Cuban life, to articulate with consistent wit and grace and in innovative and broadly attractive ways what was on the minds of his progressive compatriots and of others who shared or sympathized with aspects of their...