Poetry
Zero Hour
Hora 0
Ernesto Cardenal · 1957
Synopsis
A long poem in free verse, in several movements. It opens on the tropical nights of Central America, where dictators such as Ubico in Guatemala and Carías in Honduras rule from their palaces; it passes to the banana plantations and to Sam Zemurray, for whom a deputy cost less than a mule; it then follows Sandino, a Nicaraguan employed by an oil company in Tampico, neither a soldier nor a politician, in his war against the marines; it finally comes to the April 1954 conspiracy against Somoza.
Context
Before entering the Trappists of Kentucky in 1957, its author entrusted his unpublished poems to the poet Ernesto Mejía Sánchez; the text appeared in two stages in the Revista Mexicana de Literatura, in 1957 and in 1959, then in book form in 1960. It mixes military communiqués, conversations and documents with the verse, and opens in Cardenal's work the documentary vein that has been called exteriorism. An English translation by Donald D. Walsh and other translators appeared in 1980 from New Directions.
Who it is for
A long poem that cites names, figures and documents. One needs to know, in broad outline, the history of the region between the two world wars and afterwards.
Prizes and reception
Critics regard it as a fundamental book in its author's poetics, the one that opens his vein of documentary poetry.
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