4 - Poetry since c. 1920

Summary

An appropriate starting point for any survey of twentieth-century Latin American poetry is Saúl Yurkievich, Fundadores de la nueva poesía latinoamericana (1971; 2nd ed., Barcelona, 1973), which contains essays on César Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz and Oliverio Girondo. Yurkievich, a poet and a perceptive critic, favours the experimental side of the twentieth-century poetic tradition. Despite its title, his survey does not include Brazilians. Equally stimulating, and more wide ranging, is Guillermo Sucre, La máscara, la transparencia (Caracas, 1975) with essays on all the principal Hispanic poets from Darío to Pizarnik and Pacheco; strangely it excludes Pablo Neruda. Another poet-critic who has written engagingly on Spanish American poets is Julio Ortega in his Figuración de la persona (Madrid, 1970), with essays on Vallejo, Belli, Parra, Pacheco and many Peruvians. The best survey in English is Gordon Brotherston, Latin American Poetry: Origins and Presence (Cambridge, Eng., 1975), from Darió to Girri and Lihn, and including the Brazilians. Brotherston’s forte is situating the poets in a cultural definition of American-ness. The most useful academic survey (with bibliographies) is Merlin Forster, Historia de la poesía hispanoamericana (Clear Creek, Ind., 1981). A sympathetic approach to modern Latin American poets emerges in Ramón Xirau’s Poesía iberoamericana contemporánea (Mexico, D.F., 1972). A chronicle of very recent poetry, arguing for a living avant-garde, is Eduardo Milan’s Una cierta mirada (Mexico, D.F., 1989), based on reviews in Octavio Paz’s magazine, Vuelta. Pedro Lastra’s critical edition of the special number of Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica, 18–19 (1983–4), ‘Catorce poetas hispanoamericanos de hoy’, ranges from Gonzalo Rojas to Antonio Cisneros.