‘Everyone’s either a poet or crazy’ in the city of one of the greatest poets who ever lived

LEON, Nicaragua — A fan blows hot air around a small dining room, and five friends sit at a table chain-smoking cigarettes. Their conversation ranges over politics, philosophy and, above all, their greatest shared passion: poetry.

Here in Leon, poetry is ubiquitous. “Everyone is either a poet or crazy,” says Ulises Alaniz, a 28-year-old English teacher.

There may be no other city in the world where poetry plays such a powerful role in the collective consciousness. When people from Leon, Nicaragua’s second-largest city, visit other parts of the country, friends automatically call them “Poet.” During bad times, they say, “The verses aren’t coming.”

Those around the table on a recent sultry Leon evening include a psychologist, a lawyer, a schoolteacher and a retired organic chemist. All of them write, read and love poetry. Evening sessions like these, called “tertulias,” have been a part of Leon’s tradition for nearly two centuries.

Marcia Ondina, a 47-year-old public interest lawyer, is hosting this tertulia. At least once a week, she and her partner, Jose Luis Pereira, 33, open their home to friends and fellow poets. Their dining room is a center of Leon’s poetry scene. “Someone comes every day,” Ondina says with a smile.

Nicaraguans Marcia Ondina and Esthela Calderon discuss the role of poetry in politics during a tertulia in Ondina's home.

This poetry group is one of the half-dozen most active in Leon. It publishes a literary magazine, El Mercado, whose pages are full of poems written in Leon and in other parts of Nicaragua and Latin America. Each of the groups either publishes a magazine or sponsors public readings or other poetry-related projects. There are at least 100 active poets in Leon, a city of 200,000.

By all accounts, the historical figure from which this remarkable tradition flows is the 19th century “child poet” Ruben Dario. He’s Nicaragua’s preeminent national hero and widely considered one of the greatest poets ever to write in Spanish. His image permeates this city.

Leon’s main street is Calle Ruben Dario. At the Ruben Dario Kindergarten, every child wears a white T-shirt with his face on it. Souvenir stands sell magnets and key chains bearing his image. His boyhood home is a museum where his possessions are displayed like holy relics. Two blocks away, in Poets’ Park, his statue towers over busts of three other famous Leon poets.  

Dario was born in 1867 in the town of Metapa, now called Ciudad Dario (Dario City), but spent his formative years in Leon. According to local legend, he could read by the age of 4. He devoured literature, frequented tertulias, and published his first verses when he was 12.

He spent much of his life abroad and was acclaimed in world capitals from Buenos Aires to Paris, Rome, and New York. The Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa has called him “that obscure Nicaraguan who began by imitating the French symbolists and ended up revolutionizing the poetry of the Spanish language.”

Dario returned to Leon at the end of his life and died here on Feb. 6, 1916. His remains rest beneath a life-size marble lion in the city’s imposing cathedral.

“Dario created an intellectual possibility in Nicaragua,” said Jose Luis Pereira, co-host of the tertulias in Ondina’s home. “Leon has a historic push, a preference for poetry that not only has a social consciousness but also a formal understanding of literature.”

Dario's face is everywhere, including souvenirs like these magnets being sold to tourists.

Although Leon is Nicaragua’s undisputed poetry center, the whole country is infected with this passion. Every generation since Dario has produced world-class poets. Two of the most eminent now living are Ernesto Cardenal, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, and the introspective feminist Gioconda Belli.

“Poetry is our national sport,” Belli likes to say.

Still, some worry that the literary thrill is fading. “Few people know about Dario today, especially among the youth,” said a Calle Ruben Dario shopkeeper, Maria Valdivia, 59, who said she spends much of her time reading poetry. “They’ve lost their romanticism. On the street, boys used to woo girls with verses.”

But in many circles the art form’s alive and well.

A few blocks away, in the central courtyard of the National Autonomous University, a law student sat quietly in the shade. Jose Reyes, 22, had to study Dario in primary school. In those days, he memorized verses and took trips to the poet’s home. He believes the majority of today’s university students like poetry, especially Dario’s work.

Asked to recite a favorite verse, Reyes paused for a nearly a minute. Finally it came to him: “The princess is sad. What’s wrong with her? / The sighs escape from her strawberry lips.”  

“This poem is beautiful,” he beamed. “You could dedicate it to a girlfriend.”

This article is part of a series reported by Brown University students of veteran correspondent and author Stephen Kinzer during their trip to Nicaragua.

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