The writer of a sociological novel imposes his judgments and moral viewpoints on the reader in that he chooses the materials that make up his book. Moreover, to produce a literary work that moves logically and coherently in a single direction he is forced to modify somewhat the portrayal of people and events he may have observed in real life. A stirring novel must reach a climax that in the sociological genre is usually a tragedy, but in the course of daily existence few people's lives are violently broken. Most of the humble and the poor live meanly, without hope, and disappear silently. To depict such pale, indistinct individuals and their events would not contribute to a strong novel that would have a chance to affect public opinion and bring about changes. Therefore the novelists avoid them and the reader seldom has the opportunity to find information about them. For Spanish America, however, there is a source to which one can go: the poetry of the people, first hand, direct and authentic. This poetry usually takes the form of the copla, bequeathed by Spain not only as to subject matter, metric form, and mode of expression, but also in the actual transmission of thousands of stanzas themselves. Spanish America, however, has not been content merely to repeat. It has produced an amazing quantity of original folk poetry. Some of it is indistinguishable from that of the mother country; the rest bears signs of its birth on this side of the Atlantic. Whatever the