SOURCE: "Tradition and Originality in the Denunciatory Salmos of Ernesto Cardenal," in La Chispa '87: Selected Proceedings, edited by Gilbert Paolini, Tulane University, 1987, pp. 15-22.

In the essay below, Barrow provides a stylistic and thematic analysis of Cardenal's psalms.

What Anita Brookner has said of Germaine Greer might be applied to the contemporary Latin American poet, Ernesto Cardenal. He is like Delacroix's portrait of liberty, marching forward with his banner, rallying the troops in his commune of Nuestra Señora de Solentiname, doomed to the eminence of a figurehead as the current Nicaraguan Minister of Culture and chained to the concept of permanent struggle. He has now given up writing, however, in order to dedicate himself to ministerial duties since, at least for this Catholic priest and Marxist poet who was radicalised by his visit to Cuba in 1970, the Revolution is the same thing as the Kingdom of...