Havana-Based Poet Marcelo Morales Cintero Interviewed at the Kenyon Review

Cuban poet and writer Marcelo Morales Cintero is interviewed for the Kenyon Review (his poem "Matter (selections)" appears in the journal's Jan/Feb 2018 issue). This interview has been translated from the Spanish by Pilar Hoye and Katherine M. Hedeen. Cintero talks about Cuban authors he'd recommend, nostalgia in Havana, and his aforementioned work. An excerpt:

The sections of “Materia” could each be poems in their own right. Why did you make the decision to compile them into a single poem?

“Materia” is a poem and a book. For me, a book is an idea, and it does not matter how many pages it has. I have always written books of poetry in the form of an essay, my books of poetry all revolve around an idea that is not discarded until I feel that all has not been exhausted.

At the end of “Materia”, you write that “Uno tiene la responsabilidad para con uno mismo y con el mundo, de embellecer.” How do you think you are answering this responsibility?

My poetry is that of being alive, and therefore, as a mortal, I remember exactly the moment in which I wrote that: I was in my parents’ car and my father was driving around the house they lived in in that moment; I was about to turn thirty and I had just finished being tested for HIV—I don’t remember if I knew yet if it was negative or not. Really, I don’t remember exactly when I wrote that, but I remember that in that time I thought a lot about a specific kind of beauty, which is the beauty of acts, the beauty of responsibility which one has to act well in life with oneself and with others, with courage and goodness, and that is the type of beauty to which I refer: illuminate yourself to shine, to serve.

What are you working on right now?

For a few years I have been working on a book of essays about the despotic tradition in Cuba, from the arrival of Christopher Columbus to modern day, and on another book of poetry, “La puerta de los cielos,” which revolves around, in some way, the contrast between the North American reality and the Cuban reality. The distance, both physical and political.

Read it all at the Kenyon Review.