From the Monastery to the World

“Situated on the border between the First and the Third World, Cardenal and Merton think from the standpoint of the excluded, identify with victims of the colonial/imperial matrix of power, depict in their letters a world composed of multiple worlds. All in all, they offer us a glimmer of hope amidst the current spectacle of nationalist–separatist revivals. Through their letters Merton and Cardenal engage and transcend the deepest fears of the twenty–first century and point the way to a better future. In sum, From the Monastery to the World is both timely and wise.” —Malgorzata Poks, author of Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (born January 20, 1925) is a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet and politician. He is a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965-1977). A member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a party he has since left, he was Nicaragua’s minister of culture from 1979 to 1987.A monk who lived in isolation for several years, and one of the most well-known Catholic writers of the twentieth century, Thomas Merton was a prolific poet, religious writer, and essayist whose diversity of work has rendered a precise definition of his life and an estimation of the significance of his career difficult. Merton was a Trappist, a member of a Roman Catholic brotherhood known for its austere lifestyle and vow of silence in which all conversation is forbidden.Robert Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. He lives in California with his wife, poet Brenda Hillman, and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

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