An ordained priest who lives in Solentiname, a community that he founded, and a member of the Nicaraguan cabinet, Ernesto Cardenal is Latin America's best known exponent of what might be called the literature of the theology of liberation. His poetry is the expression of tension between his faith and a strongly rooted sense of reality and the need for drastic change. Influenced heavily by Thomas Merton, by his residence in the Trappist community of...