Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of
Date of this Version
December 1997
Abstract
Modern Mexican poetry begins with Ramón López Velarde. He is undoubtedly one of the most genuine poetic voices to inhabit that hard-to-classify period in Spanish American literature that stretches from Modernism to the vanguard poets. As a major representative of Spanish American postmodernismo (that is, the period that followed Modernismo), he is the first writer in Mexico to thematize the Mexican province in a new way. But he ought not be reduced to being the poet of the province. López Velarde was above all the creator of a new poetic language; this alone distinguishes him from González Martínez, for example. The value of his verse resides in having rescued from oblivion the simple and the minuscule by means of a deceivingly prosaic language.
Comments
Published in Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, ed. Verity Smith. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997. Pages 494–96. A division of Springer-Verlag BV. Used by permission.