"As a poet, translator, and lifelong advocate who has known the material consequence of cultural defiance and opposition to government, Margaret Randall relates now the riveting and relevant story of a literary magazine that in its seven and a half years (1962-1969) enabled artistic kinships that radicalized the imagination and political solidarities between poets across the Americas. In an account that endures 'to break down the barriers that separate us,' Randall relates the practical day-to-day demands of editing, the emergent cultural internationalism of the 1960s, resistance to Cold War conformity, and the rise of civil rights activism and student protests in the U.S. and Latin America. Randall conveys those vibrant years in a bold intersection of testimony, history, and reporting, with the support of a chorus--a theater of memory rising from the past as preserved in El Corno Emplumado 's archive of letters from readers and contributors alike. These Letters That Breathe Fire are a vitality for our times.".