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The Cuban poet, narrator, and essayist Oscar Kessel Céspedes passed away recently, as announced on Facebook by the cultural promoter and writer Dulce María Sotolongo Carrington, affiliated with the Cuban Institute of Book, in a post that circulated on social media.
Sotolongo bid farewell to the writer with a brief but heartfelt message: "A poet has died. The world must endure the inadequacy of words. The poet was mad, like almost all poets are. The sane are mathematically imperfect; only poets know that the moon has only one phase and that death is what plants you in eternity waiting for a mathematically impossible miracle." Then, with two words, he closed the announcement: "Oscar Kessel has died. Silence."
Born in Havana in 1950, Kessel was a multifaceted intellectual: poet, storyteller, essayist, journalist, screenwriter, television consultant, and cultural promoter.
He graduated in Hispanic Language and Literature and Philosophy, and worked as a professor at the University of Havana.
He was the chief editor of the magazine Proposiciones of the Pablo Milanés Foundation, an institution that sought a degree of autonomy within the Cuban cultural system.
In the year 2000, he won the First International Poetry Award Nosside Caribe, one of the most significant recognitions of his career, which connected him with Caribbean poetry in a broad sense.
Among his published works are the poetry collections De los ríos posibles (2000) and A la manera de Tiresias (2006), as well as the ethnological essay El Tatandi de los Musundis (2021), co-written with Bertha Hernández López.
His latest known book, The Other Death of the Zunzún, was published by Iliada Ediciones outside of Cuba, highlighting the challenges of the publishing market on the island.
The publisher describes the volume as "an irreverent and sincere look at everyday Cuba, with its challenges, dreams, frustrations, and disillusionments."
Kessel participated in the Havana International Book Fair in 2011 and 2012 and was present at the International Festival Palabra del Mundo as a poet awarded the Nosside Caribe Prize.
The news of his passing was not confirmed by official Cuban media or the Ministry of Culture, which is typical in Cuba due to the limited resources of state media to report on the deaths of intellectuals outside the most prominent circles.
The year 2026 has been particularly hard for Cuban literature: on March 10, the poet Lina de Feria passed away, National Literature Prize 2019, and on March 31, the intellectual Pedro Juan de la Portilla Cabrera died in Mexico.
With the passing of Oscar Kessel, Cuban poetry loses a voice that managed to portray the island with honesty and that, even from within its cultural institutions, maintained a unique and uncomfortable perspective on the reality of the country.
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