"In Nicaraguan history, the great modernist poet Rubén Darío is a strong figure, not just for literary people but for workers and farmers who possess a relatively low educational level. Attempting to trace the importance of poetry in the lives of Nicaraguans, one logically goes back to Darío...Most of those interviewed here speak of their links to Darío. His work is at the very roots of poetic experience in the country in much the same way that Whitman's Leaves of Grass shaped poetry in the United States."