The Argentine poets you should read and do not know

There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Or, moreover, there are as many definitions of poetry as there are moods of the poet. So, an author can define gender as "You are poetry" (Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer) and an author to answer "Poetry is not you" (Rosario Castellanos). And to be as valid as the works of the one as of the other, beyond the philosophical thought that underlies one and the other definition.

For Unesco, "Poetry is a manifestation of diversity in dialogue, the free flow of ideas through words, creativity and innovation "because" it contributes to creative diversity by constantly questioning how we use words and things, and ways of perceiving and 'interpret the reality', he explains on his website to explain why March 21 was declared in Paris in 1999, while "International Day of Poetry", at its 30th session.

The decision to create an "International Day" aims to promote their teaching, to encourage the oral tradition of poetry recitals, to support small publishers and to create "an attractive image of poetry so that it is not considered as outdated ". art, but a means of expression that allows communities to transmit their values ​​and more internal values ​​and reaffirm their identity; and to restore the dialogue between poetry and other artistic manifestations such as theater, dance, music and painting ".

The decision to create an "International Day" aims to promote their teaching, encourage the oral tradition of recitals, support small publishers and create "an attractive image of poetry

We propose here a selection (arbitrary, like any selection) of these Argentine poets that you may not know yet and that you should read (or reread).

• Olga Orozco (1920-1999). Pampeana by birth, she was accepted as a teacher and chose the mother's surname to sign her work. From an early age, he devoted himself to poetry and joined the surrealist literary group Tercera Vanguardia with Oliverio Girondo. Journalist (he has signed his notes with several pseudonyms), he has directed various literary publications, theater commentator, actress, he even wrote the clarin horoscope for six years and knew the Tarot. His most important work is "Darkness is Another Sun", published in 1967.

The architect Valerio Peluffo dedicated to his great love the poem "In the breeze, a moment", which evoked:

Ah, if I could find on the white walls the cruelest hour

this long crack where you left,

this cut that went through the past and cut off the future,

perhaps we would see ourselves more naked than ever, as ever after

As after paradise we lost,

and maybe we could even name ourselves with family names,

those only God knows,

and discover the ignored folds of our own story

covering the answers we keep silent,

may be inlaid as precious stones in the depths of the soul.

• Juan Laurentino Ortiz (1896-1978). Juanele was born and died in Entre Ríos, from where he nurtured the landscape to create an incomparable work that influenced several generations of poets. He studied philosophy in Buenos Aires and retired as an employee of the registry office. He described the monotony of the river landscape as no one else. "El Gualeguay", a vast poem of more than 2,000 verses is a jewel of his wonderful work, reunited with the name "In the will of the willow". Another poet on this list, Saer, considered him the greatest Argentine poet of the twentieth century.

I went to the river …

I went to the river and I felt it

near me, in front of me.

The branches had voices

that did not happen.

The current says

things that I did not understand

This has almost anguished me.

I wanted to understand him,

feel what the vague, pale sky said in him

with his first elongated syllables,

but I could not.

I was coming back

-I am the one who came back? –

in vague anguish

to feel alone among the last and secret things.

Suddenly, I felt the river in me,

he ran on me

with its shivering shores of signs,

with its deep reflections just crushed.

The river flowed in me with its branches.

I was a river at dusk,

and the trees sighed in me,

and the way and the grbad were extinguished in me.

I crossed a river, I crossed a river!

• Juan José Saer (1937-2005). Santafesino. Considered by Beatriz Sarlo as the best Argentine writer of the second half of the 20th century, he is famous for his novels and stories. His poetry is no less valuable and has been collected in only two books, one published by the artist, "The art of narrating", with three editions to which he added poems, and the third volume of his Drafts , which brings together his unpublished poems. One of the peculiarities of Saer's work is that, just as his poems meet under this title, his stories are full of sensations that stem more from poetry than from the elaboration of a story.

The shadow of the last eucalyptus, at the bottom of the soil, defended the honeysuckle, between whose leaves the paper collapses and makes disappear the thread that separates the earth from the nearby fallow land. This area of ​​the patio smells of honeysuckle. The small yellow and white flowers, exhausted, dot the dusty foliage. I bring, with the wood that I've picked up, while I walk away from the bottom by chewing the dry leaves of eucalyptus, to the place where we installed the table and chairs, the smell of honeysuckle, I do not know if in the nose or in memory, the only freshness freshness of the shiny noon that surrounds in infinity the narrow zone of shade in which we are equipped.

(fragment of a person, nothing, ever, 1980)

• Susana Thenon (1935-1991). Born in Buenos Aires, she was a poet, translator and photographer. Ironic, critical, unconventional, the work of this poet has a coherence in its evolution that was not interrupted by the years in which she devoted herself to photography and stopped publishing, but not to write. Ova completa is your most important book. His poetic work was compiled in two volumes under the title "La morada imposible".

Why is this woman screaming?

Why is he shouting?

Why is this woman screaming?

will

This woman, why are you shouting?

will

look what pretty flowers

Why is he shouting?

hyacinth daisies

because?

because what?

Why is this woman screaming?

And this woman?

And this woman?

to know

this woman will be crazy

look look at the mirrors

Will it be for his courier?

will

And where did you hear

the word courier?

it's a secret this woman

Why is he shouting?

look at the daisies

wife

mirrors

bowtie

they do not sing

Why is he shouting?

who does not fly

Why is he shouting?

which does not interfere

wife

and this woman

And was she crazy?

He's not screaming anymore

(Do you remember that woman?)

• Hector Viel Temperley (1933-1986). Poet and publicist, his works have long gone almost unnoticed, with the exception of a few insiders, including Enrique Molina. When Rodolfo Fogwill started talking about him, he became a cult writer for at least two generations of poets who idolized him. His work seemed conventional, until he freed himself from the bonds and rigidities and managed to find a voice that tells the beauty and brutality of the experience of swimming, horses, Cossacks, the presence of God, communion and the final illness, this led to an early death. His latest book, British Hospital, is undoubtedly his masterpiece.

I come from communion and I am ecstatic,

although I commune like a drowned,

in cell

of my memory hardens

the southeast rain,

like always

push the bias on a very long pier,

and sweep the long notice

vermouth that protects it

with his blue call,

almost gray to the limit,

to pbad through the complexion of the world

towards the eyes of the swimmers:

two or three rescuers,

two teenagers

and a loafer of sand they cut

with a diagonal

the sea from its beach.

• Irene Gruss (1950-2018). Heir and renovator of the familiar language of poetry of the 60s, he was as far removed from the confusion of certain metaphors as the unattractive clarity at the time of writing. She has been coordinator of writing workshops and has published a very important and remarkable poetic work in the literary world of Argentina. "Half of the truth" includes his poems.

The garden

Are you tired of the trip, Diana?

Did you leave the suitcases and look to see the sun

In your garden, did you go quickly, slowly?

You looked at the plants or you looked at each, knowing,

discover it, take care of your garden, talk, sing with the shower in your hand?

Are you tired of coming back from the trip, Diana? You are happy?

Someone caressed you, played again with your phoenix mane, kissed your eyelids

like who wants to touch a look like this blue, gray according to time?

Were you happy, Diana? Intense and hard, the trip?

Have you put your head on the seat of the plane?

Are you full of memory, sense of travel, Diana?

Do you want to eat with me to tell me?

Were you hungry during your stay, Diana, were you hungry?

Did you get drunk? Have you ever been stunned by the trip?

At one point, you felt nothing in the pit of your stomach,

Where does one say that the soul is? Do you fill with that nothing, with people,

With the things, did you have a need? Have you watched a quiet life?

So, how do I see you now, calm and wise? Did you know death during the journey,

Diana? Did that scare you, scared him? Did you bring pictures, postcards, documents?

Did you kiss a lot, kiss you?

Did you appreciate, you translated the crazy love of desire? Have you spoken too much, shut up?

too much? Why do you tell me that writing is the only thing

What we have? Are you tired, that's why, because

Are you tired of the trip? Do you want to sleep, lie on one shoulder,

Do you want to laugh, cry a little? The trip itself

It does not comfort you, Diana? This is not like the touch of another hand, it is not true?

Do you want to eat with me to tell me?

Has the rose already bloomed in your garden? Is it so beautiful?

The petals burst with life, life is purple after a trip,

Diana, is that right?