Traditions of Rupture: the Latin American Avant-Garde

We will read and write creative responses to poetry and hybrid works by the generation of early 20th-century Latin American writers who shaped a distinct corpus owing as much to the European tradition as to the region’s postcolonial history and vernacular: Huidobro, Vallejo, Neruda, Borges, and Guillén, and the Brazilian Modernists. We will also study postwar innovators—Berenguer, di Giorgio, Paz, Pizarnik, Parra, and the Brazilian Concrete Poets—as well as contemporary writers’ contributions to the expansion of the field. Special focus will be devoted to translation matters, indigenous writing, and ecopoetics. Knowledge of Spanish and/or Portuguese is not necessary.