Jorge Carrera Andrade is one of Ecuador's most celebrated poets, a man who in many ways introduced his homeland and its history to the world at large. In the tradition of other Latin American poet-diplomats, such as Chilean Pablo Neruda and Mexican Octavio Paz, he served his country as ambassador in Latin America, North America, Europe, and Asia, living abroad the vast majority of his life. The poet explains in Mi vida en poemas: Ensayo autocrítico seguido de una selección poética (My Life in Poems: An Auto-Critical Essay Followed by Selected Poems, 1962), "Soy un hombre. . . . que ha tratado de conocer el mundo para desenvolver en él su vida como un viaje. . . . He vivido para ver. . . . he intentado de formar un registro de las realidades del munda, vistas desde la ventana de mi conciencia" (I am a man. . . . who has endeavored to...