Mulatto poet from Camagüey who emphasized the African contribution to Cuban society and is credited with originating Cuban negrismo. Long before the Revolution of 1959 he protested American domination and social injustice. After his father, a Partido Liberal senator and newspaper editor, was killed in the Chambelona uprising, he began supporting his family as a printer. In 1919 his first woks appeared in the Camagüey gráfico. He collected his early poems as Cerebro y corazón, but the book was not published until 1964. In1926, he went to Havana as a typist in the Interior Ministry, and joined the Vanguardista movement, but published his work in provincial magazines such as Orto of Manzanillo. In 1930 Gustavo E. Urrutia invited him to contribute to “Ideales de una raza,” his page on the culture of the Afro-Cubans, to enhance their social position, in the Diario de la marina. There Guillén published strong articles against racism, criticizing Cuban society, portraying the bitter life of the lower classes and their exploitation. He wrote Versos de ayer y de hoy, a collection of early works and of his vanguardist poems, and Al margen de un libro de estudio. But his most acclaimed work of that time was Motivos de son (wherein he translated the Haitian son dance rhythm into a literary form) widely praised in literary circles on its 1930 publication. In this and later poems he imitated African drums, using repetition and alliteration in a style reminiscent of Vachel Lindsay. In 1931 he published Songoro cosongo. With irony and grace, he described vignettes of Cuban society, mixed with Afro-Cuban folklore. In West Indies Ltd. (1934), without excluding the presence of Afro-Cuban elements, Guillén broadens his concerns and attacks the United States as well as Cuban politicians. In 1937 he published Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas and España: poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza, expressing the frustrations and hopes of the exploited classes.
In 1938 he joined the Unión Revolucionaria Comunista, having been since 1936 a collaborator of the Communist press as editor of the weekly Resumen and co-editor of the magazine Mediodía. He traveled in Latin America from 1942-1948, publishing his collection El Son entero in Buenos Aires in1947. His satires against Batista led in 1953 to exile, mostly in France. In 1954 he received the Lenin Peace Prize and in 1958 he published in Buenos Aires the collection of six elegies La Paloma de vuelo popular: elegías in which he prophesied the triumph of a revolution in Cuba. He returned to a triumphal welcome in Cuba, January 23, 1959. Revered as Cuba’s national poet, his poetry readings became national events. He resumed his journalism – collected in 1972 as Prosa de prisa – while also establishing the Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba. His post-revolutionary poetry was collected as Tengo in 1964, and followed by El Gran Zoo (1967), La Rueda dentada (1972), El Diario que a diario (1972), Por el mar de las Antillas anda un barco de papel (1977), Música de cámara (1979), Páginas vueltas (1982), Sol de domingo (1982), and El libro de los sonetos (1984).
