SOURCE: "Stranded by Politics and War: Nicaragua's Loved, Neglected Poet," in The New York Times Book Review, January 18, 1987, p. 3.

Kinzer is an American journalist who has served as a bureau chief in Nicaragua and Germany for the New York Times. While working in Managua, Nicaragua, for nearly thirteen years, he developed a native's perspective of Central America's complex politics that few American journalists have been able to duplicate. In the essay below, Kinzer laments the neglect suffered by Darío's poetry in contemporary Nicaragua.

One can hardly imagine how remote the newborn republic of Nicaragua must have been from the world's cosmopolitan centers during the last century. It was perceived, not quite correctly, as a tropical backwater, steamy, inert and destitute of learning and culture. Yet from a wretched Nicaraguan village, by some amazing mystery, emerged Rubén Darío, the vagabond poet who was to influence Latin...