Cuba’s Poetic Imaginary (1959–1989)

doi:10.1017/9781009168359.029

28 - Cuba’s Poetic Imaginary (1959–1989)

from Part IV - The Revolution’s Literary-Cultural Initiatives and Their Early Discontents

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2024

Kristin Dykstra

Edited by

Vicky Unruh and

Jacqueline Loss

Show author details

Vicky Unruh: Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Jacqueline Loss: Affiliation:
University of Connecticut

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter examines the elaborate poetics set forth by Cuban poets on and off the island in the first three decades after the Cuban Revolution. Using the concept of “dramas of institutionalization,” the chapter traces the (sometimes extremely) divergent esthetic attitudes and geographical and political positioning by poets such as Roberto Fernández Retamar, Heberto Padilla, Eliana Rivero, Jesús Cos Causse, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Soleida Ríos, Lourdes Gil, Reina María Rodríguez, Angel Escobar, Ramón Fernández-Larrea, and Rolando Prats, among others. The accounts and analyses of Cuba’s voluminous poetic production elucidate its uses of colloquialism, interdisciplinarity, and linguistic confluence, among many other strategies.

Keywords

Cuban poetry (1959–1989)Roberto Fernández Retamar (1930–2019)Heberto Padilla (1932–2000)Eliana Rivero (1941–)Jesús Cos Causse (1945–2007)Gustavo Pérez Firmat (1949–)Soleida Ríos (1950–)Lourdes Gil (1950–)Angel Escobar (1957–1997)Rolando Prats (1959–)

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature , pp. 438 - 453

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009168359.029 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alemán, Lídice. “Género, raza y poesía cubana de los ochenta en Entre mundo y juguete de Soleida Ríos.” Afro-Hispanic Review, vol. 33, no. 2, Fall 2014, pp. 9–21.Google Scholar

Alemany Bay, Carmen. “Nacion y memoria en la poesía cubana de la revolucion.” Atenea, vol. 497, Spring 2008, pp. 23–35.Google Scholar

Alfonso, María Isabel. Ediciones El Puente y los vacíos del canon literario cubano: Dinámicas culturales posrevolucionarias. U Veracruzana, 2016.CrossRef Google Scholar

Andrés, Cira. “La muerte del Ángel.” Ángel Escobar: El escogido, edited by Rodríguez Santana, Efraín, Unión, 2001, pp. 91–101.Google Scholar

Behar, Ruth, and Suárez, Lucía M, editors. The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World. Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.CrossRef Google Scholar

Bejel, Emilio. Gay Cuban Nation. U of Chicago P, 2001.Google Scholar

Benson, Devyn Spence, editor. Afrocubanas: History, Thought, and Cultural Practices. Rowman and Littlefield, 2020.Google Scholar

Cabezas Miranda, Jorge. “Odette Alonso y Carlos Alberto Aguilera: Dos voces ‘antagónicas’ de la última poesía cubana.” Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura, vol. 27, no. 1, Sept. 2011, pp 157–170.Google Scholar

Cabezas Miranda, Jorge . Proyectos poéticos en Cuba (1959–2000): Algunos cambios formales y temáticos. U de Alicante, 2012.Google Scholar

Cabrera, Yoandy. “Delfín Prats: Poesía como negación y censura en Cuba.” Lírica: Revista Sobre Poesía Ibérica e Iberoamericana, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

Casado Fernández, Ana. “Poéticas de la resistencia en la literatura carcelaria cubana posrevolucionaria.” Asedios al caimán letrado: Literatura y poder en la Revolución Cubana, edited by Gallardo Saborido, Emilio J., Gómez-de-Tejada, Jesús, and Puñales-Alpízar, Damaris, Karolinum, 2018, pp. 33–42.Google Scholar

Casal, Lourdes. “Conversation in a Train Station with an Old Man Who Speaks Spanish.” Translated by Gustavo Pérez Firmat, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, edited by Stavans, Ilan, Norton, 2011, pp. 1190–1191.Google Scholar

Casal, Lourdes . Palabras juntan revolución. Casa de las Américas, 1981.Google Scholar

Castro, Fidel. “Pamphlet Entitled Palabras a los Intelectuales (Words to Intellectuals), Havana, National Cultural Council, 1961.” Tr. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), 30 June 1961, Castro Speech Database, Latin American Network Information Center, U of TX Libraries, lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro.html.Google Scholar

Cos Causse, Jesús. Jesús Cos Causse: Poesías selectas. Edited by Branch, Jerome, Serie Malunga, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2021.Google Scholar

Damerdji, Amina. “Commitment Trouble: Gender Performances and Poetic Dissent in the Cuban Revolution.” Latin American Literary Review, vol. 45, no. 90, July 2018, pp. 44–52.CrossRef Google Scholar

Davies, Catherine. “Literature by Women in the Spanish Antilles, 1800–1950.” The Cambridge History of Latin American Women’s Literature, edited by Rodríguez, Ileana and Szurmuk, Mónica, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 181–195.Google Scholar

Dopico Black, Georgina. “The Limits of Expression: Intellectual Freedom in Postrevolutionary Cuba.” Cuban Studies, vol. 19, Jan. 1989, pp. 107–142.Google Scholar

Fernández, Rocío. “La mala memoria: Heberto Padilla y la ruina de la historia.” Estudios de Teoria Literaria, vol. 11, no. 24, Mar. 2022, pp. 90–101.Google Scholar

Fernández Retamar, Roberto. “The Other.” Translated by Arnold Odio, New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 4, Summer 1985, p.521.Google Scholar

Fowler, Víctor. “El muro anterior a toda pérdida.” Ángel Escobar: El escogido, edited by Rodríguez Santana, Efraín, Unión, 1973, pp. 109–131.Google Scholar

García, María Cristina. Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959–1994. U of California P, 1996.CrossRef Google Scholar

Gil, Lourdes. “Cuban Writing in the United States.” Concise Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, edited by Smith, Verity, Routledge, 2000.Google Scholar

Goldman, Dara E. Out of Bounds: Islands and the Demarcation of Hispanic Caribbean Identity. Associated University Presses, 2008.Google Scholar

Goldman, Dara E. . “Out of Place: The Demarcation of Hispanic Caribbean Cultural Spaces in the Diaspora.” Latino Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, Nov. 2003, pp. 403–423.CrossRef Google Scholar

Herman, Rebecca. “An Army of Educators: Gender, Revolution and the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961.” Gender & History, vol. 24, no. 1, Apr. 2012, pp. 93–111.CrossRef Google Scholar

Hernández Salván, Marta. Minima Cuba: Heretical Poetics and Power in Post-Soviet Cuba. SUNY P, 2002.Google Scholar

Jusdanis, G. “National Poetry.” The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, edited by Greene, Roland et al., 4th ed., Princeton UP, 2012, pp. 915–918.Google Scholar

Kapcia, Antoni. “Educational Revolution and Revolutionary Morality in Cuba: The ‘New Man’, Youth and the New ‘Battle of Ideas.’” Journal of Moral Education, vol. 34, no. 4, Dec. 2005, pp. 399–412.CrossRef Google Scholar

Kumaraswami, Par, and Kapcia, Antoni. Literary Culture in Cuba: Revolution, Nation-Building, and the Book. Manchester UP, 2012.CrossRef Google Scholar

Lomas, Laura. “On the ‘Shock’ of Diaspora: Lourdes Casal’s Critical Interdisciplinarity and Intersectional Feminism.” Cuban Studies, no. 46, 2019, pp. 10–38.Google Scholar

López Lemus, Virgilio. “Salidas del coloquialismo en la década de 1970 en Cuba.” Aula Lírica: Revista Sobre Poesía Ibérica e Iberoamericana, vol. 8, 2016, pp. 51–59.Google Scholar

Miskulin, Sílvia Cezar. “La revolución cubana y el caso Padilla en las revistas Plural y Vuelta.” Estudios: Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, no. 23, June 2010, pp. 217–240.Google Scholar

Negrón-Muntaner, Frances, and Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda. “In Search of Lourdes Casal’s ‘Ana Veldford.’” Social Text, vol. 25, no. 3 (92), 2007, pp. 57–84.CrossRef Google Scholar

Oboler, Suzanne. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States. U of Minnesota P, 1995.Google Scholar

Owen, S. “Poetry.” The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, edited by Greene, Roland et al., 4th ed., Princeton UP, 2012, pp. 1065–1068.Google Scholar

Rivero, Raúl. “Historia viva.” Poesía sobre la tierra. UNEAC, 1973.Google Scholar

Sánchez Aguilera, Osmar. “Poesía en claro: Cuba, años 80 (Long play/variaciones).” Revista del Ateneo Puertorriqueño, vol. 2, no. 5, 1992, pp. 67–87.Google Scholar

Soto, Francisco. Reinaldo Arenas. Twayne, 1998.Google Scholar

Zurbano, Roberto. “Cruzando el parque: Hacia una política racial en Cuba.” Humania del Sur, vol. 16, no. 31, July 2021, pp. 137–170.Google Scholar