Indeed, poetry seems ideally suited to the Nicaraguan disposition. The daily papers include poems, along with cartoons and news. Nicaragua has produced poet-heroes like Ruben Dario, the 19th-century diplomat and journalist whose seminal influence on Spanish-language poetry has been likened to Whitman's on English.
In Leon, Dario is buried to the side of the altar in the hulking Basilica de la Asuncion, said to be the largest church in Central America. His words are carved in the marble, but like history itself, they live on all around Nicaragua.
One night on the beach at San Juan del Sur — the same beach where thousands of Americans once decamped for the gold rush, and where others are, maybe, rushing back again — I met John Oliver, a poet from Nicaragua's eastern coast. He recited a poem of his, in his rich Caribbean English.
Then he switched to Spanish, and Dario's heartbreaking Melancolia. His strong voice blended into the soft surf as he hit the last line: "No oyes caer las gotas de mi melancholia?" ("Can't you hear the drops of my sadness falling?")
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