The most important posthumous collection of revolutionary Salvadoran poet and intellectual, Roque Dalton, the “patron saint of the Latin American left," is a fierce satire. Only the holy trinity of Lenin-Fidel Castro-Che Guevara escapes his sharp-edged mockery. These are nasty poems, but never unjustly so. Now available here in a new bilingual edition.
“Profound yet playful, the poet Roque preferred to laugh at himself than take life too seriously, and so saved himself from grandiloquence, solemnity, and other ailments so gravely afflicting Latin American political poetry.” —Eduardo Galeano, Roque
He denounces the cruel hypocrisy of his enemies (the Salvadoran dictatorship, US imperialism, the international bourgeoisie) and his comrades, which ultimately lands him on the enemy side of civil violence. The mirror he holds up to revolutionaries and poets who fail to live up to their words turns to reveal an endearingly flawed and tragicomic figure. Only his cynicism is a pretense, armor for his idealism. The autobiographical poems in this collection mythologize the author’s life, turning him into the unwilling martyr of a mystical revolution that continues to enlist those naïve enough to believe poetry can be political.
Born in El Salvador in 1935, ROQUE DALTON was a poet, essayist, intellectual, and revolutionary. As a student at the University of San Salvador, he helped found the University Literary Circle, traveled to Soviet Russia, and joined the Salvadoran Communist Party. After he was arrested in 1959 and 1960 for inciting peasant revolts and sentenced to execution by firing squad, Dalton left for exile in Mexico, and then for post-revolutionary Cuba, where he received guerrilla training and where the majority of his works were published. A poet who brilliantly fused politics and art, Dalton’s work greatly influenced Central American literature. The author of eighteen volumes of poetry and prose, his book Taberna y otros lugares, a reflection on his time spent in Prague as a correspondent for the International Review, won the Casa de las Américas prize in 1969. In 1973, Dalton clandestinely returned to El Salvador to join the armed struggle. He was murdered on May 10, 1975, four days before turning forty. Seven Stories Press is issuing bilingual editions of his poetry collections, Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle / Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases was published in 2023, and A Slightly Nasty Book / Un libro levemente odioso and Tavern and Other Places / Taberna y otros lugares, translated by Natasha Wimmer, are forthcoming.
