Adolfo Martí Fuentes

He was a professor at the University of La Habana and National Director of Literature of the former National Council of Culture.

He was the first winner of the Cucalambé contest. He deserved the décima Prize in the 26 de Julio contest with his book Alrededor del punto, which represented an important milestone in the trajectory of the written décima.

He was born in El Ferrol, La Coruña, Galicia, Spain in 1922. He arrived in Cuba in 1923. He died in La Habana in 2002.

Very young, he became involved in various political and social organizations, among them, the Communist Youth League and the Youth Group of the People. Later he was active in the Cuban Communist Party. He graduated with a degree in Sciences and Letters in 1943 from the Instituto de La Habana and as a licentiate in Hispanic Language and Literature.

In the second half of the 1940s, he published his first poems in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper Hoy.

In 1943, after graduating from secondary school, he began studying Law, only to abandon it three years later, when he joined the PSP as a professional cadre. He then directed the tabloid Jornadas, organ of the Cuban Movement for Peace, of which only three issues would appear, since the small printing press and minimal editorial office were destroyed by the Batista police. He had to go into exile in Mexico in 1956, where he would write some of his best poetic texts.

Upon his return from exile in 1959, he was an editor of the newspaper Hoy and, the following year, he was appointed consul in Colón (Panama) and, in 1961, in Guayaquil (Ecuador) and, later, first secretary of the Cuban embassies in Czechoslovakia and Brazil (1962-1964).

This intense journey favored the poet in his cultural worldview, which would be supported by his studies at the School of Letters and Art of the capital's University, where he graduated (1969) and went on to teach General and Spanish Literature there and in the Departments of History and Journalism.

In this fertile period he writes essays on La Celestina, the tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and Molière and modern comedy—included in the invaluable Cuadernos H, so remembered by those of us who were then students of the Faculty of Humanities—as well as others on García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén and Violeta Parra, which appeared in specialized publications such as Unión, Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí and Casa de las Américas.

Later, he served two directorships: of Foreign Relations at the UNEAC and of Literature at the former National Council of Culture (CNCC) between 1974 and 1977, where he carried out singular work by enriching the "La Edad de Oro" Contest and, in particular, creating the Literary Workshops Encounter-Debates in 1974.

From 1971 onwards came years of creative fullness for Martí Fuentes, since in addition to his numerous awards achieved in the most important literary contests (see box), his décimas and sonnets would have repercussions, not only among critics and his fellow poets, but also in the rich world of our music.

Thus, in the "La Edad de Oro" Contest, he would deserve prizes in Children's Song for his musicalized poems Canto de arena (1974) and Piloto del alba (1975) which, like his décimas Guayabera and Mar—gathered in a 45 rpm record and sung by Miriam Ramos—as well as the sonnet Quiero la paz and his décimas Pas de deux, with the music of Yo soy el punto cubano, by Celina González, sung by her herself and recorded in a long-playing record in homage to Alicia Alonso, constituted undeniable successes on radio and TV.

Such successes served to corroborate the value of his emblematic decimario that in 1971 truly opened new possibilities to the young poets of that time, who rightfully considered it a point of reference and strong influence. And indeed, Alrededor del punto made rich paths possible for this stanza in Cuba, and helped define styles and tendencies that were already without resources. In this sense, colleague Virgilio López Lemus emphasized that the volume "is one of the visible anti-colloquialist reactions, in favor of more intimate lyricism, or at least of a conjunction between intimism and social poetry..."

Next Friday, February 22, in the context of the 17th International Book Fair and in the José Antonio Portuondo Hall, at 4:00 p.m., the Poetic Anthology of this master of Cuban literature will be presented (already published in his native Galicia in 2005), which with a prologue by his son, also poet Carlos Martí and Galician researcher Xoxéd María Dobarro Paz, boasts a beautiful cover by Elisa Vera and a careful edition by Bertha Herenández. This important volume (published by Editorial Letras Cubanas in its Contemporáneos Collection) includes many of his essential texts that set the pace in the décima and sonnet written on the Island, where not a few poets continue his legacy, such as that of his colleague-friends Raúl Ferrer and Jesús Orta Ruiz, Indio Naborí.

In his now classic décima in free verses "Despedida," Adolfo Martí Fuentes wrote, once and for all, perhaps as a poetic testament, with the beauty he bestowed on all his poetry: Now it is right that I withdraw / from this cage of pure air; / bound to its magical wall / a light ribbon and hard band. / It is just, then, that I celebrate / its borders of living asbestos. / I struck song on its bars, / tried to tame its harmony / and found in such a cage the charm / of murmur and distance.

Active Bibliography
Alrededor del punto. (Décima), 85 pp, 1971.
Contrapuntos (poetry), 72 pp, 1980.
Puntos cardinales (poetry), 81 pp, 1980.
Por el ancho camino (poetry), 39 pp, 1981.
La hora en punto (poetry), 238 pp, 1983.
Libro de Gabriela (poetry), 76 pp, 1985.
Puntos de vista (essay), 150 pp, 1988.
El árbol del retorno (poetry), 1993.