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Although Rafael Alberti (ol-BEHR-tee) established his reputation almost entirely on the basis of his poetry, he became involved in drama after emigrating to Argentina, writing plays of his own and adapting Miguel de Cervantes’ El cerco de Numancia (wr. 1585, pb. 1784; Numantia: A Tragedy, 1870) for the modern stage in 1944.

José María Heredia y Campuzano, born in Cuba at a time when the island was beginning to resent its position as a territorial possession of Spain, was regarded by Spaniards as “the compendium and epitome of all enmity toward Spain.” Yet, at least in his early period, he considered himself a Spaniard and referred in his poetry to “tender Mother Spain.” During his youth, his father was chief judge in a court in Caracas that had to try rebels against the tyranny of Monteverde. Because of leniency, the judge was demoted to a position in Mexico where José María lived until his father’s death. Then he went to Havana to complete his law studies.

The poem “Searching/Not Searching” carries an epigraph attributed to the poet Robert Duncan: “Responsibility is to use the power to respond.” This might almost be taken as Rukeyser’s motto, as her entire adult life and most of her poems responded sharply to the world events that she witnessed.