SOURCE: “The Death of a Clown,” in The Nation, Vol. 263, No. 9, September 30, 1996, pp. 32-33.

In the following review, King emphasizes the qualities of revolutionary joy and wonder Dalton celebrated in his poetry.

Roque Dalton [author of Small Hours of the Night,] once addressed a poem to a woman asking that she never speak his name when he was dead because he would rise from the ground at the sound of her voice, and he should have “earned silence” by then. I think we are safe in speaking his name, though, because nothing a North American could say now would sound good enough to summon him. Since he died in 1975, our government has secretly helped silence in blood the Salvadoran revolution for which he sacrificed his life, then salted the wounds by recognizing U.S. “heroes” for fighting a war they supposedly did not fight.

His country has no...