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Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
-- Sigmund Freud
Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
-- Gustave Flaubert
Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.
-- John Barrington Wain
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
--James McNeill Whistler
For an excellent summary of contemporary Peruvian poetry, check out Estación Poética. Javier Sologueren, Blanca Varela, J.E. Eielson, Washington Delgado, Francisco Bendezú, Carlos G. Belli, Antonio Cisneros, Carmen Ollé, Rudolfo Hinostroza, Enrique Verástegui. That's quite a cast. Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, an elderly influential poet, died in August 2001.
Finally, a page on Peruvian poetry would be amiss if it did not mention the greatest poet, César Vallejo. I have not dared to even attempt to imitate his distinctive voice. Poets.org's Exhibit with a good selection of links to other sites, both in English and Spanish.
Finally, a word of praise for the embattled publishing houses in Peru that brought out poetry books even though there was no chance of making a profit: Milla Batres, Mosca Azul, La Rama Florida and the Casa de la Cultura/Institute Nacional de Cultura. In many cases, the poets themselves underwrote their books.
William Rowe was an early translator of many of the Peruvian poets that I also worked with.
Diverse, experimental, stubbornly individualistic voices, sprung from the guts of Andean society. Set the mark so high that few poets could even dare to match. Continue to influence creative imagination even today in Peru.
This group of poets probably are underrated because they fall between the founders and the high-profile generation that appeared in the late 1960s. Sologuren, Varela and Delgado probably stand out as the most influential.
The "Generation of the 1960s" brought together seven poets, marking a fresh wave of poetic imagination and counterculture openess. Most iconic, Javier Heraud died young in 1963 on the Amazon frontier, trying to infiltrate into the country as a combatant in a Castroite guerrilla force. Luis Hernandez committed suicide in 1977, leaving behind a legacy of inventive notebooks of drawings and poetry, as well as his published poems. Hinostroza faded away. Calvo died in 2000. Antonio Cisnernos became the most extrovert face of Peruvian poetry. Marco Martos straddled academics and journalism while continuing to write poetry. Mirko Lauer landed in journalism while continuing to write poetry, novels and literary criticism and to teach. He recently went back to get his doctorate in literature.
The poets who followed the Seven had to live under their long shadow. The Hora Zero movement seemed as much as a reaction against the bard-like status of poetry as a literary manifesto. By the end of the century, poets were like all Peruvians, learning to scrap by amid the violence and impoverishment of the modern era. Remaining relevant in that setting is similar to the struggle of all poets, anywhere.
