In addition to a vast catalog of paintings, drawings and sculptures, the great Cuban modernist, Micah Carpentier has left us with reams of unpublished experimental poetry. Post-revolutionary Cuba had little appetite for neither the typographical minimalism of the Concrete poets nor the syntactically evasiveness of the so-called Nueva Vanguardia and so Carpentier's far from insignificant linguistic ventures have gone virtually unnoticed.
A corrective of sorts is underway in the form of a small exhibition at the Gran Salón de la Depravación Social in Camagüey. The fact that such an exhibition, sanctioned by the Ministry of Culture, is taking place in Cuba's third largest city is yet another sign of the political thaw that is slowly yet palpably evolving.
Carpentier would be pleased by this as well as some new legislation aimed at relaxing earlier prohibitions against ribald metaphor, double entendre and unmodified pronouns. He was a great champion of limited free speech, even among his rivals and it has been speculated that when he ran afoul of the authorities it was precisely because of his principled stance.
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