Abstract
Excerpt: While living in exile in Spain, José Martí (1853–1895) wrote poems in support of Cuban independence from Spain. His writings for the cause had brought about his initial arrest and exile from Cuba in the first place, but he continued undeterred, in verse and prose, penning critiques of the colonial regime and elegies for revolutionaries.1 One of these early poems takes up a Classical motif – that of the country-as-colossus – in a remarkably innovative depiction. The culminating lines of the poem titled “Venid! Venid; – mi sangre bullidora” [Come, Come! My Boiling Blood (October 1871)], which survives in the first of Martí’s expatriate notebooks, read as follows: