Roberto Juarroz
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Roberto Juarroz (Coronel Dorrego 1925-1995 Temperley) was an Argentine poet famous for his "Poesía vertical" (Vertical poetry). He published fourteen volumes of poetry in all, numbered successively 1 to 14, under the general title "Poesía vertical", the first appearing in 1958 and the final one posthumously in 1997. W.S. Merwin published a bilingual selection of Juarroz' poems in the 1980s.
The poetry of Juarroz is spare and sometimes cryptic, with lines such as "busco las espaldas de Dios" ("I seek the back of God").
Octavio Paz wrote: Each poem of Roberto Juarroz is a surprising verbal crystallisation: language reduced to a bead of light. A major poet of absolute moments. For Julio Cortázar, Juarroz's poems included both the most elevated, and most profound, written in Spanish in recent years.
| El silencio que queda entre dos palabras | Hanging between two words, this silence |
| no es el mismo silencio que envuelve una cabeza cuando cae, | is not the same silence surrounding a head that falls, |
| ni tampoco el que estampa la presencia del árbol | nor that imprinting the tree's presence |
| cuando se apaga el incendio vespertino del viento. | when the evening fire of the wind stills. |
[edit] Poems in English translation
Juarroz, Roberto. Vertical Poems, trans. by W.S. Merwin. Story Line Press (November 1976). ISBN 0-685-67046-5
