Otto-Raúl González is, for many, the major poetic voice of the 1944 Guatemalan Revolution and the years that followed. A model for political verse rooted in the ideals and images central to the poetic and social revolutionary upheavals of the early 1940s in Guatemala, he initiated a true literary revolution parallel in importance to the movements initiated by other Latin American poets of his time, including Vicente Gerbasi in Venezuela, Eliseo Diego and Cintio Vitier in Cuba, and Nicanor Parra in Chile. Like many other Guatemalan intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century, González has lived in exile since 1954, residing mostly in Mexico.

Beginning with his 1943 landmark work, Voz y voto del geranio (Voice and Vote of the Geranium), González has published more than forty books. They include poetry that is mainly political but also erotic, such as Diamante...