Chapter 31 - The Politics of the Poem: From Gelman to Perlongher

Summary

After three decades of vanguards there was a colloquial turn in Latin American poetry. Nicanor Parra’s Poemas y antipoemas, César Fernández Moreno’s Argentino hasta la muerte, Carlos Martínez Riva’s La insurrección solitaria and Neruda’s Odas elementales – all published in 1954 – show the abandonment of the oneiric in favor of a less fancy language and new links with popular culture. Juan Gelman’s Gotán (1962) is included in this trend. A decade later, exile marks an unexpected turn: Gelman will not only speak of defeat and death but will also impel exile and death on his lines: it is about not only the political in the poem but the politics of the poem. Therein resurfaces a key American issue: the need to construct a tradition. Gelman’s Hechos y relaciones (1980) and Citas y comentarios (1982) are contemporary with the first publications by Néstor Perlongher (Austria-Hungría, 1980; Alambres, 1987). With his Neobarroso, Perlongher proposes a relationship with the popular born of the curtailment in a domestic lexicon, an extolment of the kitsch and pop. Unlike Gelman, who finds in Europe the breadth of poetry, Perlongher discovers in Brazil the reciprocation of two systems, of Hispanic America and the Portuguese-speaking world.