One of the greatest movements of the 20th century was the boom in Latin American literature, from which came, in addition to great novelists, some of the best poets of the last century. But the production of great Latin American poets has not stopped in recent years. In this post we leave you with a selection of some of the best of both times.
- More Latin American literature through these short stories.
INDEX
1. Latin American poets of the 20th century
2. Current Latin American poets Latin American poets of the 20th century
In this century, Latin American poetry was struggling to be the most important and influential in the world with others of much more tradition, this is just a sample. 1. Pablo NerudaPablo
Neruda. | Urban character.
One of the great figures of the 20th century regardless of the discipline. The importance of Pablo Neruda (real name Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto) as a politician, thinker and, above all, writer and poet is indisputable. In addition to his best-selling books such as ‘Twenty love poems and a desperate song’, Neruda’s work (which reaches more than 40 references) is of a very high quality, something that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 Mixing a simple language and understandable themes for the general public with the knowledge of high poetry is undoubtedly one of the greats. We leave you a poem of his, but he has much more to offer us. Sonnet 83
It’s good, love, to feel you close to me at night,
invisible in your dream, seriously nocturnal,
while I unravel my worries
as if they were confused nets.
Absent, through dreams your heart navigates,
but your body thus abandoned breathes
looking for me without seeing me, completing my dream
like a plant that duplicates itself in the shade.
Upright, you will be another who will live tomorrow,
but from the frontiers lost in the night,
from this being and not being in which we find ourselves,
something remains drawing us closer in the light of life
as if the seal of the shadow marked
its secret creatures with fire. 2. Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges. | Urban character.
The eternal candidate for the Nobel Prize, one of the most tireless scholars of literature of our times, an exceptional storyteller with an overflowing talent and imagination who also cultivated a first-class poetry . A poetry in which he not only recreated the typical themes of the discipline (love, death, the passage of time) but also left varied reflections on almost everything and told fantasy stories in his verses. Argentine of meat and Saxon of spirit. The poem that we review here deals with one of Borges’s favorite motifs, the labyrinth, and it is a jewel that you cannot miss. Labyrinth
There will never be a door. You are inside
and the alcazar encompasses the universe
and has neither front nor back
neither external wall nor secret center.
Do not expect that the rigor of your path
that stubbornly forks into another,
that stubbornly forks into another,
will have an end. Your destiny is iron
as your judge. Do not wait for the charge
of the bull that is a man and whose strange
plural form gives horror to the tangle
of endless interwoven stone.
Does not exist. Nothing expect. Not even
in the black twilight the beast. 3. Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz. | Urban character. Octavio Paz is another Nobel Prize Latin American poet (Mexican in this case)that was made with an indisputable place in the Olympus of 20th century literature. Paz was a thinker and essayist and many other things, but today we want to highlight here his facet as a poet with works that combine simplicity and strength like this one. The street
It is a long and silent street.
I walk in the dark and stumble and fall
and get up and step with blind feet on
mute stones and dry leaves
and someone behind me steps on them too:
if I stop, he stops;
If I run, run. I turn my face: nobody.
Everything is dark and there is no way out,
and I turn around corners
that always lead to the street
where no one waits for me or follows me,
where I follow a man who stumbles
and he gets up and says when he sees me: nobody. 4. Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral. | Urban character.
Another Chilean, Nobel Prize winner who wrote under a pseudonym (Lucila de Maria Godoy Alcayaga) as Neruda. Although she would have to say it backwards. Neruda did everything like her. She was not in vain she was several years older than him and floor before where the floor. Gabriela Mistral’s work is a constant struggle . Despite her brevity, she leaves us poems of great beauty and emotion that served to make her one of the most respected female voices in 20th century poetry. The love that is silent
If I hated you, my hatred would give you
words, resounding and sure;
but I love you and my love does not trust
this dark talk of men!
You would like it to become a scream,
and it comes from so deep that it has undone
its burning torrent, fainted,
before the throat, before the chest.
I am the same as a full pond
and I seem to you an inert fountain.
All for my troubled silence
, which is more atrocious than entering death! 5. Cesar Vallejo
Cesar Vallejo. | Urban character. This Chilean poet was one of the great figures of the Latin American avant-garde movement. With a brief life that coincided with the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, he fully experienced the isms that convulsed the artistic life of the entire West and left us pearls that will remain forever such as ‘The Black Heralds’, but above all ‘Trilce’ , at the end of the decade of the 10s and the first years of the 20s.
Cesar Vallejo was a figure in life but his influence has been enormous after his death, inspiring generations and generations of poets. Edges of ice
I come to see you go by every day,
enchanted little steamer always far away…
Your eyes are two blond captains;
your lip is a brief
red handkerchief that waves in a blood goodbye!
I come to see you pass; until one day,
drunk with time and cruelty,
enchanted little steamer always far away,
the evening star will depart!
The rigging; winds that betray; winds
of women what happened!
Your cold captains will give order;
and the one who will have left will be me. 6. Julio Cortazar
Julio Cortazar. | Urban character.
Although Cortazar has one of the most powerful narrative works of all time (with his followers and his detractors, of course, like all original artists) his poetic work deserves to be valued even more than it is. . Cortazar has nothing to envy other great Latin American poets and if we place him alongside the group of poets of his Spanish-speaking generation, he stands out even more. We leave you with one of his best poems.
- Read these 40 unforgettable Julio Cortazar phrases.
The interrogator
I don’t ask about the glories or the snows, I want to know where
the dead swallows
gather ,
where the used matchboxes go.
No matter how big the world
is, there are nail clippings, fluff,
tired envelopes, falling eyelashes.
Where do the mists go, the coffee grounds,
the almanacs from another time
? I ask about the nothingness that moves us;
in those cemeteries I conjecture that
fear grows little by little,
and that the Roc hatches there. Current Latin American poets
As time progresses, there are more female poets than female poets who dominate Latin American poetry. The authors we name are great poets who developed part of their career in the 20th century but who have published or continue to publish important titles in the 21st century. 1. Ida Vitale
Ida Vitale. | Urban character.
This almost 100-year-old Uruguayan poet has a very long career as a woman of letters: teacher, essayist, literary critic, but it has been in recent years that her poetic work has been recognized internationally and massively. As a modern woman she has fought in her work for the liberation of women and it is seen in poems like this one. Fortune
For years, enjoy the error
and its amendment,
to have been able to speak, to walk freely,
not to exist mutilated,
not to enter or if in churches, to
read, to hear the beloved music,
to be at night a being as in the day.
Not be married in a business,
measured in goats,
suffer government of relatives
or legal stoning.
Never parade anymore
and never admit words that put
iron filings
in the blood .
Discover for yourself
another unforeseen being
on the bridge of the gaze.
Being human and woman, neither more nor less. 2. Mario Benedetti
Mario Benedetti. | Urban character.
Another Uruguayan poet who has spent his entire life writing but, in the same way as Ida Vitale, died well into the 21st century and the new generations of poets and, above all, of readers are very aware of his lively and simple poetry . Poetry books such as ‘El amor, las mujeres y la vida’, ‘Rincon de Haikus’ or ’50 Sonnets’ are examples of the modernity of his poetry when the turn of the century was a reality.
- Discover the best phrases pronounced by Mario Benedetti.
Forever
If the emerald dim,
if the gold lost its color,
then
our love would end.
If the sun did not heat,
if the moon did not exist,
then it would not
make sense to live on this earth ,
nor would it make sense to
live without my life,
the woman of my dreams,
the one who gives me joy…
If the world did not turn
or the time did not exist,
then, it would never die,
neither would
our love die…
but time is not necessary,
our love is eternal ,
we do not need the sun
, the moon or the stars
to continue loving each other…
If life were different
and death came
then, I would love you
today, tomorrow…
forever…
still. 3. Claribel Joy
Claribel Joy. | Urban character.
The winner of the 2017 Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry is one of the most important poets of her generation. The Nicaraguan cultivates a modern poetry, heir to the best Latin American poets . The puns, the simplicity of the verse, the color of her poems. These are more than enough reasons to read this artist who is so important to understand the literature of her country. Shuffling memories
Shuffling memories
I found yours.
It didn’t hurt.
I took it out of its case,
shook its roots
in the wind,
held it up to the light:
It was polished glass
reflecting goldfish,
a flower without thorns
that did not burn.
I threw it against the wall
and sounded my alarm siren.
Who put out its fire
? Who took its edge
from my memory-lance
that I loved ? 4- Ernesto Cardenal
Ernesto Cardenal. | Urban character.
Nicaraguan poet, essayist and priest. With a conflictive relationship with the Church due to his support for liberation theology, his poetry earned the Reina Sofia award for Ibero-American poetry in 2012, the highest prize to which Latin American poets can aspire. Another elderly poet who has seen how his popularity has spread in the 21st century by receiving, in addition to the aforementioned prizes as important as the Pablo Neruda Prize in 2009. His poetry deals, as is presumable, with the problem of God and society, love from a platonic perspective and politics. In the hammock I felt…
In the hammock I felt that you were telling me I
didn’t choose you because you were a saint
or because you were a future saint
I’ve had too many saints I
chose you for a change.
- Discover the 16 types of poems with practical examples.
Bibliographic references
Ortega, J., & Aguirre, A. (Eds.). (1997). Anthology of Latin American poetry of the 21st century: The turn and the transition (Vol. 187). XXI century.
