SOURCE: "The Revolutionary Alternative," in Self and Society in the Poetry of Nicolás Guillén, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, pp. 115-38.

In the following essay, Williams discusses Guillén's treatment of the Cuban Revolution in his poetry. Williams notes that although Guillén's poems reveal his commitment to the socialist cause, they also raise doubts about the revolution's extremism and Cuba's political isolation.

That the Cuban Revolution did not seek merely to transform the material conditions of man is well known. Ernesto (Che) Guevara's pronouncements on the need to create a "new man," as well as the debate regarding moral and material incentives in economic policy, are a clear indication that the revolutionary leadership not only undertook to restructure the socio-economic institutions of Cuban society, but also aimed at effecting [what Richard R. Fagan, in The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (1969) Called] a complete "transformation...