Ernesto Cardenal

was born in 1925 in Granada, Nicaragua.  He is a Revolutionary activist, disciple of Thomas Merton, Roman Catholic priest, ambassador for the Sandinistas, Minister of Culture in post–Somoza Nicaragua, and co–founder of the international cultural center: House of Three Worlds.  On his eightieth birthday, he received the nation’s highest honor, the Order of Rubén Darío.  He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  This year, New Directions published his Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems, representing six decades of his work.