The Angel of Rain

Born in Banes, Cuba, in 1918, GASTON BAQUERO was raised in rural poverty and trained as an agronomist before becoming a journalist. On reading his early work, critic Maria Zambrano was struck by its sumptuous sensuality. The poems were, she said, confirmation of how the richness of life, the delirium of substance, can stand before the void. Baquero was active in all the major Cuban literary journals, including Origenes, but left Cuba immediately after the revolution of 1959 to spend the rest of his life in Spain. He died in 1997, with several collections of essays and journalism to his credit, as well as eight volumes of poetry. Although he was officially nonexistent in Cuba for many years, his work was widely known there. Distant from all orthodoxy, suspicious of all univocal and exclusionary discourse, writes editor and fellow exile Pio E. Serrano, Gaston Baquero has become the most influential poet of new generations of poets in Cuba. Younger writers have discovered a wall against intolerance in Baquero's discreet skepticism. Within him there was always the impassioned heartbeat of his land.