The poems of Ernesto Cardenal collected in Zero Hour … will interest many readers in the United States less as poetry than as political commentary. These verses … describe events leading up to the revolution in Nicaragua and the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979…. [Despite Cardenal's] adherence to the "theology of liberation," he accepts the late Mao Zedong's view that "revolutionary art without artistic value has no revolutionary value." Indeed, how Cardenal attempts to reconcile the demands of poetic creation with revolutionary activity constitutes much of the dramatic tension of Zero Hour….

In the title poem, Cardenal fashions a terse commentary on the brutalities practiced by Anastasio Somoza's government. Or, rather, he marshals facts into a cry of outrage against torture, murder and oppression that is all the more hard hitting because such events speak for themselves…. In this moving bit of propaganda, our pity and indignation rise as...