Contemporary Latin American Poetry (I)

When we speak of Spanish-American poetry, the first name that comes out or one of the first, is undoubtedly that of Rubén Darío, with whom the Modernism, but there is Spanish-American poetry beyond this one or by José Hernández, another great poet.

Among others, the following voices stand out: Gabriela Mistral, Jose Marti, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Cesar Vallejo y Vicente Huidobro. In this article we will talk about the first three, and in the one that will be published tomorrow we will talk about the last three. If you like poetry, or rather, good poetry, don't stop reading what's coming.

Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral, or what is the same, Lucia Godoy She was one of the poets of the time who with her poetry tried to discover realism, everyday reality, also taking refuge in intimacy.

Gabriela, who was the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, wrote "Sonnets of death", one of his best and most relevant works. It is inspired by the suicide of Romelio Ureta, his old love. And the first sonnet goes like this:

From the frozen niche that men put you in,
I will bring you down to the humble and sunny land.
That I have to sleep in it, men did not know,
and that we have to dream on the same pillow.

I'll lay you down on the sunny earth with a
sweetness of a mother to the sleeping son,
and the earth has to become cradle softness
upon receiving your body as a sore child.

Then I will sprinkle dirt and rose dust,
and in the bluish and light dust of the moon,
light offal will be imprisoned.

I will walk away singing my beautiful revenges,
Because to that hidden honorer the hand of no
will come down to dispute your handful of bones!

Jose Marti

José Marti, Cuban, had poetry as a sincere mode of communication, manifested in a formal way through the simple and everyday. The poet identifies himself in "Simple verses" with his poetry, because in it he presented and shaped his soul as it was. When writing these verses he reveals himself: a unit made up of disparate and contrary elements, as happens when he names "The weakness of the deer" against "The strength of steel". It also reflects feelings such as solidarity and the abolition of resentment:

Cultivate a white rose
in June like January
For the honest friend
who gives me his frank hand.

And for the cruel that tears me away
the heart with which I live,
Thistle or nettle cultivation;
I grow the white rose.

Pablo Neruda

I do not know how many times I have written about this author, but I do not get tired. Neruda was and will always be one of the great names in world poetry, not only in Latin America. Just by naming your work "Twenty love poems and a desperate song", published in 1924, we are saying everything ... And I would lack lines to publish everything that deserves to be read by this author. But I will be brief, or at least, I will try to be:

For you to hear me
my words
they get thin sometimes
like the footprints of seagulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunk rattlesnake
for your hands soft as grapes.

And I look at my words from a distance.
More than mine they are yours.
They climb in my old pain like ivy.

They climb the damp walls like this.
You are the one to blame for this bloody game.

They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they populated the loneliness you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you.
Now I want them to say what I want to tell you
so that you can hear them as I want you to hear me.

Anguish's wind still drags them.
Hurricanes of dreams still knock them over sometimes.
You hear other voices in my sore voice.
Tears of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, partner. Do not leave me. Follow me
Follow me, partner, in that wave of anguish.

But my words are staining with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I'm making an infinity necklace out of all of them
for your white hands, soft as grapes.

If you liked it and have enjoyed reading this article as much as I did writing it, do not miss the second part that will be published tomorrow, Thursday. In it we will talk briefly about Octavio Paz, César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro.