Canto a la Argentina, Oda a Mitre y otros poemas

Darío was born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento in 1867, near San Pedro de Metapa, about 90 kms from Managua, but moved as a child to the city of León, where he came early to writing, both poetry and journalism, before relocating at 14 to Managua, and then El Salvador, where he was to find sponsors and helpful influences. By 1886, he had moved on again, this time to Chile - at that point something of a magnet for intellectuals from the rest of Latin America because of its political stability - where he worked as a journalist, but suffered from class-based prejudice from the upper echelons of Chilean society. Nonetheless his first books were published there, including Azul (1888), which had an enormous impact, kickstarting modernismo, and making the poet's name. Thereafter he would continue to relocate frequently: Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, before the Nicaraguan government included him in a delegation to Spain, marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Subsequent journeys took him to France, where he served as Nicaraguan consul, to Brazil, and then back to Madrid where he served as Ambassador. Uncertainties about money and a chaotic love life bedevilled him throughout his life, and he died at 49 of cirrhosis of the liver.