Felix Pita Rodriguez; Once-Exiled Cuban Poet

Felix Pita Rodriguez, 81, a Cuban poet and political exile who returned home after the Castro revolution. Long active in the Communist Party, Rodriguez, along with Pablo Neruda, was one of the founders of the Ibero-American Anti-Fascist Committee in Madrid and Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. He lived abroad as a student, writer and exile for many years in Venezuela, Mexico, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Morocco, returning to Cuba in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro took power. He admired the Surrealist writers of the early part of the 20th Century, as well as the mystical British writer William Blake, and tried to reconcile their influence with Socialist Realism, a now largely discredited artistic movement. Among his works were “San Abul de Montecallado” in 1945, “Tobais” in 1955, “Cronicas (Poesia Bajo Consigna)” in 1961 and “Elogio de Marco Polo” in 1974. On Friday in Havana of undisclosed causes.