NICOLAS GUILLEN – A BILINGUAL ANTHOLOGY
Keith Ellis, 2003
English Version, 551 pages (14cm x 21cm)
Nicolas Guillen occupies an outstanding place among contemporary Spanish American poets.  He is the author of a vast body of work, selections of which have been translated into more than thirty languages.  The present volume in English and Spanish, with introduction and selection by the Jamaican Hispanist Keith Ellis, recognized authority on Guillen’s work, constitutes an exceptional anthology that brings together the most significant of the love, political and social poetry of this bard, the Cuba's National Poet. 

The translation, done by Keith Ellis especially for this publication, approximates in English the sensual and musical accents with which Guillén tells his courageous truths. A Bilingual Anthology begins with writings from his youth, taken from Cerebro y corazón. Then there are poems taken from Motivos del son (1930) and Sóngoro cosongo (1931), two paradigmatic books, both in the author’s bibliography and in the context of Cuban and Hispanic-American poetry of that era. Poems are also taken from, among others, Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas (1937), La paloma de vuelo popular (1958), Tengo (1964), El gran zoo (1967), La rueda dentada (1972) and El diario que a diario (1972). Likewise, it includes works from Por el mar de Las Antillas anda un barco de papel (1977), the only children’s book written by Guillén.