Nicolás Guillén, Popular Poet of the Caribbean

Nicolas Guillen is generally lionized by the critics as an exponent of an exotic version of mainstream Latin American poetry, a somewhat avant-garde negroid poetry (literally, poesia negroide) He has also been claimed by the experts, and justly so, as a member of the Afro-American literary community, so his name is mentioned in the same breath as those eminent literary figures who were the principals in the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes. The West Indian character owes its distinctiveness to the African cultural heritage and is, in effect, a legitimate neo-African cultural manifestation. This African West Indian character accounts for the originality and basic value of Guillen 's art and links Guillen inextricably to the rich popular poetic tradition of the region.