March 19, 1985

Raphael has arranged for us to go to a ball game this evening. Since he has failed to arrange fishing for us, failed to arrange the visit to Hemingway's house, I am willing to give him a shot at baseball. My logic is breaking down. I feel adrift, unable to make my own schedules, capable off drifting in Havana's evenings for a long, long time.

No arguing with the umpires, no one keeps the balls hit into the stands; 22 hits, and Havana wins in a couple of hours, 8-7. No post-game hawkers. Ten minutes after the game's over, the lights of the stadium go off.

March 20, 1985

An early breakfast: the meeting begins at nine at the Casa de las Americas—a little early for most of the writers I know.
It is cloudy. Looks like rain to me. But having lived in Cincinnati, 364 days of the year look like rain—the only exceptions, the days when it is already snowing when one wakes alone, or with a wife who doesn't love you or with a child who loves you too much or, after all, alone.

The royalty base for the writers is high. They get 40 percent of sales and this can escalate to 80, depending on the writer and the edition. All books are subsidized by the government so that books can be sold inexpensively.
There are no 'professional writers' in Cuba; everyone must hold a regular job. A distribution system makes sure the books see daylight in all fourteen provinces. The biggest problem is the shortage of paper. Which also seems to provide a built-in way of censoring materials, although we are told that anyone can publish anything; one needn't be sympathetic to the Revolution.
Bill asks about royalties to authors of foreign works we have seen in the bookstores. Answer:  "Doesn't Mario Puzo already have enough money?"
Nancy Morejón arrives and Raphael introduces her to the group from the podium. During the next series of questions regarding copyrights and infringements, she whispers in my ear, "You are Terry Stokes. We can go do an interview now if you wish." At last. [Interview]

The group meets back at the bus, and I ask Lilia where I can get flowers for Lourdes' birthday.

This afternoon we go to the Writers' And Artists' Union, and will then go to a meeting with someone from Radio Havana, which for some reason will not be held at Radio Havana. Security?
UNEAC, the Union, is housed in someone's old (hurriedly) vacated mansion. We are directed through the courtyard, past the hens and the flowers, to a back building which seems to be a rehearsal hall or recording studio of some sort. Before the panel begins, Lilia introduces me to David Cherician, a poet on my list. He says we can get together at my convenience. He works for the Union; we can do it there.
We're supposed to leave for Cienfuegoes in the morning. What am I going to do? I ask Lilia whether I can stay in Havana, knowing this is going to create animosity among some members of the group. She says, "Sure. But you will have to pay for the hotel room we have reserved in Cienfuegoes for you." David and I set up an interview for the next morning.

The notion of a 'professional writer' is not part of the Cuban system; everyone has some other job to help the revolution. They work in journalism or write for radio or work for UNEAC or teach. To become a member of the Union, a young writer must have won prizes in the provinces, must produce work of undisputedly high quality, and must present a curriculum vitae which convinces the members of the Union that he is committed to his art. There are delegations of writers and artists in all the provinces to deal with the regional artists.
As a publishing house, UNEAC issues sixty books a year, as well as several magazines, including Criteria, a journal of criticism, and a literary tabloid, La Gaceta Nueva, which prints poetry, fiction, and reviews. The other publishing functions include anthologies of recent works of poetry, fiction, drama, and more criticism.

Can writers or artists be critical of the society?

Criticism is experienced at every level of society, because every person is working to build that society. Criticism makes things better; poets and writers are the same as everyone. There has been a strong and powerful campaign on the part of the U.S. government to undermine, and affect the image of the society and the mental state of the people and confuse them. In general, the society is self-critical in order to combat the capitalists; it is necessary in a socialist society. We feel anyone is revolutionary who reviews mistakes and makes things better.

There are no self-help books in Cuba. How to Win Friends and Influence People or Your Multiple G-Spots and What to Do with Them would be seen as frivolous and unnecessary in a society where every book is a self-help book in a sense, a moral imperative, a guide to everyday life, and the commitment to the revolution. There are no romance novels. There is no discrimination between higher and lower forms of literature:  science fiction sits on the shelves right next to children's literature, spy novels, 'literary fiction' (our term), and various non-fiction works. A writer does not confine himself to one genre. It's all in a day's activities; it's all of a piece.

Today, writers feel a strong sense of self-worth. Under Batista, a writer paid to have 300 copies of a book published which were mostly distributed among friends. Today, editions of 4,000 copies of poetry, 10,000 copies of prose, and 50-200,000 copies of children's literature are printed. Many people listen to literature on the radio, a legacy of the early days of the revolution when stories were piped into the tobacco workers' sheds. With the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing.

The panel offers us various publications, and tells us we might be able to give a reading if it can be worked out. When I queried earlier, it sounded as though they weren't really interested or it was too much of a pain in the ass. A woman comes into the room during the discussion and speaks to Lilia. I hear my name and figure I'm in trouble again. But Lilia motions, indicating that everything's all right.
As I dash for the elevator trying to catch up to Bill so I don't get locked out of the room, I knock off the 3-foot pink marble top of the ashtray standing next to it. The million pink bits resound like bowling balls throughout the enormous lobby. Lilia stares at me, astonished. I figure I'm headed for the lock-up now. "Okay, Lilia. What do I do?" She will ask the woman at the desk.
I don't hear the word, 'hoosegow.' I pay the ten dollars, and head upstairs to have a drink or six and tell my tale of the afternoon. Jim wants to know why, for ten bucks, they didn't give me the thing.

I'm on a speed trip, burning with the possibility of friendship. I ask Raphael whether he's had time to go by Lourdes' house on my behalf. "No. But I certainly will."

My sexual pitch seems to be rising after these meetings with the writers. Perhaps it's the year of rough drafts without completion, a few lines of a poem, a few little poems completed, an extensive set-up for a story which hasn't found its way into the world… Here, at least I'm getting completed texts. I don't know what it is, but it has something to do with my life and death, and living in a constant state of fear. Fear of what? Fear of not being as smart as I was as a young man; fear that I cannot say what I need to say in poetry any longer; fear that I don't fully understand what I am doing in fiction; fear that I am locked into a job where I'm not appreciated; fear that, while I love my children, I always have to check those emotions since Max and Nadja really belong to their mothers, not me.

When the engagement in life becomes one of process, there hardly seems a point in completing anything. I am surviving without myself.

March 20, l985

I prepare for the interview with David Cherician by re-reading the few poems I have by him. His work is various, at times as quirky and casual as Frank O'Hara, Paul Blackburn or Richard Brautigan; at other times as problematic and cryptic as Vallejo. He has translated MacBird, has worked as a journalist for La Gaceta Nueva.
At 11:00, I ask Delia, who is in charge of hotel guest relations, to please get me a cab, which she does with a friendly smile. She is five feet tall, has gorgeous long black hair and moves like a dancer. Of course, I am in love with her.

David is walking up the steps in his now familiar denim jacket. We sit on the spacious patio, and exchange books first, as seems to be the custom. He gives me a volume of his Love Poemsand several children's books, one by his wife, Excillia Saldana, which retells African folk tales. He is presently at work on new poetry for children as well as adults, and he is translating the complete works of T.S. Eliot.

He was 18 at the time of the revolution, and says it changed his life, his view of himself as a writer. He is curiously formal in conversation, very different from the speaker in his poems who is given to passions quite willingly.

I ask him whether there is anything he thinks U.S. writers should know about Cuban writers, anything he wants to pass along as information.

There was a meeting here at UNEAC and a poet said we poets should assume the task of translating at least one poet from another language into ours. If all the poets all over the world assume this task and translated just one poem or two or three we all would get to know each other much better. I think that's a very interesting proposition. I practice it widely, and here we do it. There is a thirst for the knowledge of the poetry from all over the world. I think that would be a very good way of covering this lack of mutual knowledge of each other's poetry. If every poet takes on the task of translating from French to English to German to Spanish, etcetera, we could spread a lot of good poetry over the world. I think we would gain a lot.

(A frequent contributor to the magazine, Terry Stokes teaches literature and writing at the University of Cincinnati.)

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