First convened in 1959, shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the House of the Americas Poetry Prize has been for forty years a reference of the state of poetry in Spanish America. As Saul Yurkievich wrote: "Through the authors who consecrate, one can follow the directions, establish the coordinates of Latin American literary production."

Authors and authors from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, El Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela (and once Spain) confirm the continental projection of this Prize and offer a panorama Which, combined with that of the finalists and the members of the successive jurors, represents and groups much of the best poetry of Hispanic America in the last four decades.

Selected and organized by a collaborator of the House of the Americas and prologue by its current director, this Anthology allows to check and evaluate the agglutinative work developed by this institution in the field of poetry from its founding to the present.