The author of the sonnet "Me desordeno, amor, me desordeno" , one of the most read and remembered of all the Cuban poetry of the 20th century, was born in Matanzas and  will always live there.

The publication of the book of poems that made her known beyond the confines of Matanzas dates back to 1949: "Al sur de mi garganta", which one year later won the National Poetry Prize of the Ministry of Education, and of which other editions have been published since then. The triumph of Carilda Oliver Labra was splendorous, and the recognition arrived to her: Eminent Daughter of Matanzas, Commemorative Medal of the Centenary of the Cuban Flag and her inclusion in very serious anthologies.

Bold woman, in 1957 and 1958 she took important steps in her life: in the first one she wrote and sent to the Sierra Maestra her "Canto a Fidel"; in the second one appeared, in the book Memoria de la fiebre, her famous" Me desordeno, amor, me desordeno" (I mess up, love, I mess up).

Years later she would tell her biographer Vicente Gonzalez Castro:

    When I published "Me desordeno..., the bishop came here, because the Catholic ladies wanted to excommunicate me, and so other things that today are seen with much laughter. When I wrote  "Canto a Fidel", I also dared, because although I did not have a signature, my style was known by everybody.
    So, it is worth reproducing the sonnet that has been so often brought back and forth:

I get out of order, love, I get out of order

when I go in your delayed mouth,

and almost for no reason, almost for nothing,

I touch you with the tip of my breast.

I touch you with the tip of my breast

and with my helpless loneliness,

and perhaps without being in love

I get out of order, love, I get out of order.

 

It is curious to know what Carilda said: "It is for the rhythm and the feeling that it undresses. Although people do not believe it, it is a very spiritual poem". No comments".

But here is a second anecdote of the eternal bride of Matanzas city. For those who do not value in its measure the tenth or spinel it has to be very interesting to know what the poetess thought and expressed in this strophic form.

Back in 1987 she was interviewed by journalist Luis Sexto, who asked her, surely to provoke a forceful answer, if she did not feel "diminished when using a form so used even by those who are not poets".

Carilda replied: "Diminished? I am exalted by the "décima". Although of Spanish origin, it is the favorite stanza of our people. Nowadays we have very happy "decimistas". Of course, it is difficult. That is to say, when composing it we can sin of being facile, of being mannered; bordering on vulgarity, or, on the contrary, we can suffer from coldness, rigidity, loss of freshness if we try too hard to purify it".

And then he added: "A décima will be perfect if, in spite of having an enjambement, it does not seem so; if it is a drop of music and, at the same time, a drop of wisdom; if we do not expect, when we hear it, the rhyme as a clock chime; if it disguises that it is a décima and at the same time it is splendid as a "décima"... I do not know if I make myself understood: the good "décima" is a miracle".

Anthologies, jury interventions, programs and videos on her life and work, round tables, awards (the Distinction for National Culture, the Alejo Carpentier medal) endorse the criteria of an author who in 1997 received the National Prize for Literature and lives forever in the grateful memory of her readers.