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Charting the Pluriverse

This ambitious collection highlights over fiftyfive years of obras maestras from “Nicaragua’s preeminent poet after Rubén Darío,” and one of Latin America’s most well-known and accomplished poets throughout America and Europe; Ernesto Cardenal has been published in over twenty languages, and his life’s work has certainly warranted his place of distinction in Latin American letters. A worthy tribute to this living legend, Pluriverse boasts the English translations of some of Cardenal’s best verse in four unique sections, arranged in chronological order. The collection begins with Zero Hour, poetry from 1949–59. The initial works of this section evoke the turbulent events of Nicaragua’s history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and often refer to historical figures like William Walker in poems like “With Walker in Nicaraugua.” In these poems, Cardenal employs vivid imagery to convey messages of an often overtly political nature. Editor Jonathan Cohen states that this time period reflects a crucial turning point in Cardenal’s poetic style, as the poet, during his time at Columbia University in New York, “immersed himself in the work of US poets.” Cardenal’s burgeoning concern for the sociopolitical situation in his home country coupled with the influence of American poets, particularly modernists such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, allow the poet to convey local concerns, past and present, in a uniquely universal manner, while remaining grounded in the roots of the subject matter and its personal impact. “With Walker in Nicaragua” displays the subtle influence of early-twentieth-century American imagist poetry embedded in wistful Whitmanesque diatribes: