27 VERY REPRESENTATIVE AVANT-GARDE POEMS - LITERATURE - 2024

The avant-garde poems emerged in the first half of the 20th century and were characterized, like the avant-garde current in general, by having a free and innovative style, not tied to literary conventions.

The avant-garde in poetry does not respect the metric, takes risks, is irreverent and very creative, to the point of practicing total freedom.

This anarchy is observed in the typography used and the way in which the lines are captured on paper (upside down or in the shape of animals, spirals, etc.), incorporating drawings, sounds and dream images or strange situations.

Avant-garde poetry intentionally appeals to bad spelling, the creation of non-existent words, and the dispensation of connectors and other grammatical devices.

The theme is also out of the ordinary and the words do not seek to have meanings beyond the words themselves, that is, there is no figurative sense.

All these characteristics were very marked in the avant-garde poetry of Europe. When this current permeated America, the writers of this continent adopted it to express their socialist political ideals and their concern for social issues.

For this reason, in their thematic poems they dealt with the problems of humanity, using more or less subtle metaphors, but ultimately reflecting their commitment to the people.

You may be interested The 15 Most Outstanding Avant-garde Representatives.

List of poems by the main authors of the avant-garde

August 1914

Author: Vicente Huidobro

It is the vintage of the borders

Behind the horizon something happens

On the gallows of dawn all the cities are hung

The cities that sniff like pipes

Halalí

Halalí

But this is not a song

Men walk away

Real Ebony

Author: Nicolás Guillén

I saw you passing by one afternoon,

ebony, and I greeted you;

hard between all the logs,

hard between all the logs,

your heart remembered.

Plow bucket, plow sabalú

-Real ebony, I want a ship,

real ebony, of your black wood…

-Now it can't be,

wait, friend, wait,

wait for me to die.

Plow bucket, plow sabalú

-Real ebony, I want a chest,

real ebony, of your black wood…

-Now it can't be,

wait, friend, wait,

wait for me to die.

Plow bucket, plow sabalú

-I want a square table

and the pole of my flag;

I want my heavy bed,

I want my heavy bed,

ebony, of your wood,

oh, of your black wood…

-Now it can't be,

wait, friend, wait,

wait for me to die.

Plow bucket, plow sabalú

I saw you passing by one afternoon,

ebony, and I greeted you:

hard between all the logs,

hard between all the logs,

your heart I remembered.

A Laughter and Milton

Author: Jorge Luis Borges

Of the generations of the roses

That in the depths of time have been lost

I want one to be saved from oblivion,

One without a mark or sign among things

What were. Fate has in store for me

This gift of naming for the first time

That silent flower, the last

Rose that Milton brought to his face,

Without seeing her. Oh you vermilion or yellow

Or white rose of an erased garden,

Magically leave your past

Immemorial and in this verse shines,

Gold, blood or ivory or tenebrous

As in his hands, invisible rose.

The bird

Author: Octavio Paz

In the transparent silence

the day rested:

the transparency of space

was the transparency of silence.

The still light from the sky calmed

the growth of the herbs.

The bugs on the ground, between the stones,

under the identical light, were stones.

The time in the minute was satiated.

In the absorbed stillness , midday was consummated.

And a bird sang, thin arrow.

Wounded silver chest vibrated the sky,

the leaves moved,

the herbs woke up…

And I felt that death was an arrow

that does not know who shoots

and in the blink of our eyes we die.

The Black Heralds

Author: César Vallejo

There are blows in life, so strong… I don't know!

Blows like the hatred of God; as if before them, the hangover of everything suffered

it will pool in the soul… I don't know!

They are few; but they are… they open dark ditches

on the fiercest face and the strongest back.

Perhaps it will be the foals of barbarians Attila;

or the black heralds that Death sends us.

They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul

of some adorable faith that Fate blasphemes.

Those bloody hits are the crackles

of some bread that burns on the oven door.

And the man… Poor… poor! Roll your eyes like

when a clap calls us over the shoulder;

turns crazy eyes, and everything lived

it pools, like a pool of guilt, in the gaze.

There are blows in life, so strong… I don't know!

Poem XX

Author: Pablo Neruda

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example: "The night is starry,

and the blue stars shiver in the distance."

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I also loved her.

How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

To think that I do not have her. Feeling I've lost her.

Hear the inmense night, even more without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to grass.

Does it matter that my love could not keep it.

The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's it. In the distance someone sings. In the distance.

My soul is not content with having lost it.

As if to bring her closer, my gaze seeks her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that bleaches the same

trees.

We, the ones then, are not the same.

I don't love her anymore, it's true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Of other. Will be from another. As before my kisses.

His voice, his bright body. His infinite eyes.

I don't love her anymore, it's true, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, and oblivion is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my

arms,

my soul is not content with having lost her.

Even if this is the last pain she causes me,

and these are the last lines that I write for her.

Ode to Rubén Darío

Author: José Coronel Urtecho

(Accompanying sandpaper)

I teased your cement lion at the end.

You know that my cry was tears, i no pearl. I love you.

I am the killer of your portraits.

For the first time we ate oranges.

Il n'y a pas de chocolat -said your guardian angel.

Now you could perfectly

show me your life through the window

like pictures that nobody has painted.

Your emperor dress, which hangs

of the wall, embroidery of words,

how much smaller than that pajama

what do you sleep with now, that you are just a soul.

I kissed your hands.

«Stella -you were talking to yourself-

finally arrived after the stop », i don't remember what you said next.

I know we laugh about it.

(At last I told you: «Master, I would like

see the faun ».

But you: "Go to a convent").

We are talking about Zorrilla. You said:

"My father" and we talked about friends.

«Et le reste est literature» again

your impertinent angel.

You got very excited.

"Literature all - the rest is this."

Then we understood the tragedy.

It's like water when

flood a field, a town

no fuss i enter

through the doors i fill the halls

of the palaces - in search of a channel, of the sea, nobody knows.

You who said so many times «Ecce

Homo »in front of the mirror

i didn't know which of the two it was

the real one, if any.

(Did you want to tear apart

the glass?) None of this

(marble under the blue) in your gardens

-where before you died you prayed at the end-

where I ride with my girlfriend

i am disrespectful to swans.

II

(Accompaniment of drums)

I've had a brawl

with the thief of your ties

(myself when I was going to school), which has broken your rhythms

punched in the ears…

Liberator, I would call you

if this weren't insolence

against your provencal hands

(i the Baena Songbook)

in the «Grandmother's Harpsichord»

-your hands, what a kiss again, Teacher.

In our house we would meet

to see you go in a balloon

and you left in a galley

-after we discovered that the moon

it was a bicycle-

and you returned to the big party

of the opening of your suitcase.

The grandmother was enraged

of your parisian symphonies, and we kids ate

your wax pears.

(Oh your tasty wax fruits)

You understand.

You who were in the Louvre

among the marbles of Greece, and you ran a march

to the Victory of Samothrace, you understand why i'm talking to you

like a camera

in the Plaza de la Independencia

of the Cosmopolis of America, where did you teach how to raise centaurs

to the cattle ranchers of the Pampas.

Because, looking for me in vain

between your dream curtains, I have finished calling you

«Teacher, teacher», where your sumptuous music

it is the harmony of your silence…

(Why have you run away, master?)

(There are a few drops of blood

in your tapestries).

I understand.

Sorry. Nothing has been.

I return to the rope of my contentment.

Ruben? Yes. Rubén was a marble

Greek. (Its not this?)

"All's right with the world," he told us

with its superb prosaic

our dear sir roberto

Browning. And it is true.

FINAL

(With whistle)

Anyway, Rubén, inevitable citizen, I greet you

with my bowler hat, that the mice ate in

one thousand nine hundred twenty i five

co. Amen.

What a pity!

Author: León Felipe

What a pity

that I cannot sing in the style

of this time the same as the poets who sing today!

What a pity

that I cannot sing with a voice engoado

those brilliant romances

to the glories of the country!

What a pity

that I don't have a homeland!

I know that the story is the same, the same always, that it passes

from one land to another land, from one race

to another race,

how

those summer storms pass from this to that region.

What a pity

that I do not have a region, a

small country, a provincial land!

I should have been born in the heart

of the Castilian steppe

and I was born in a town that I don't remember anything about;

I spent the blue days of my childhood in Salamanca,

and my youth, a dark youth, in the Mountain.

Afterwards… I have no longer dropped anchor,

and none of these lands lifts me

or exalts me

to always be able to sing in the same tune

to the same river that passes

rolling the same waters,

to the same sky, to the same field and in the same House.

What a pity

I don't have a house!

A manor and emblazoned

house, a house

where he kept,

in addition to other strange things,

an old leather armchair, a moth-eaten table

(tell me

old domestic stories like Francis Jammes and Ayala)

and the portrait of my grandfather who won

a battle.

What a pity

that I do not have a grandfather who won

a battle,

portrayed with one hand crossed

on the chest, and the other on the hilt of the sword!

And what a pity

that I don't even have a sword!

Because… What am I going to sing if I have neither a country,

nor a provincial land,

nor a

manor and emblazoned house,

nor the portrait of my grandfather who won

a battle,

nor an old leather armchair, nor a table, nor a sword?

What am I going to sing if I am an outcast

with barely a cape!

However…

in this land of Spain

and in a village in the Alcarria

there is a house

in which I am inn

and where I have, borrowed,

a pine table and chair straw.

I have a book too. And all my trousseau is

in a

very large

and very white room

that is in the lowest

and coolest part of the house. This wide and white room

has a very clear light … A very clear light that enters through a window that overlooks a very wide street. And in the light of this window I come every morning. Here I sit on my straw chair

and I beat the long hours by

reading in my book and watching

people pass through the window.

Things of little importance

seem like a book and the glass of a window

in a town in the Alcarria,

and yet, it is enough

to feel the whole rhythm of life in my soul.

That all the rhythm of the world through these windows passes

when

that shepherd who goes after the goats

with a huge stick,

that overwhelmed woman

with a load

of firewood on her back,

those beggars who come dragging their miseries, from Pastrana,

and that girl who goes to school so reluctantly.

Oh that girl! Makes a stop at my window

always and sticks to the crystals

as if it were a stamp.

How funny

his face is

in the glass, crushed

with his chin down and his little flat nose!

I laugh a lot looking at her

and I tell her that she is a very pretty girl…

She then calls me

"silly!" And leaves.

Poor girl! She no longer passes

this wide street

reluctantly walking towards school,

nor does she stop

at my window,

nor does she stay glued to the windows

as if it were a picture.

That one day she got bad,

very bad,

and another day the bells tolled for her to die.

And on a very clear afternoon,

down this wide street,

through the window,

I saw how they were taking her away

in a

very white box…

In a

very white box

that had a little crystal on the top.

Through that glass you could see my face

the same as when it was

glued to the glass of my window…

The glass of this window

that now always reminds me of the little glass of that

so white box.

All the rhythm of life passes

through the glass of my window…

And death also passes!

What a pity

that not being able to sing other feats,

because I do not have a homeland,

nor a provincial land,

nor a

manor and emblazoned house,

nor the portrait of my grandfather who won

a battle,

nor an old leather armchair, nor a table, not a sword,

and I am an outcast

who barely has a cape…

come, forced, to sing things of little importance!

The dream

Author: Jorge Luís Borges.

If the dream were (as they say) one

truce, a pure repose of mind, Why, if they wake you up abruptly, Do you feel that a fortune has been stolen from you?

Why is it so sad to get up early? The time

robs us of an inconceivable gift, so intimate that it's only translatable

in a slumber that the vigil gilds

of dreams, which may well be reflections

trunks of the treasures of the shadow,

of a timeless orb that is not named

and that the day deforms in its mirrors.

Who will you be tonight in the dark

dream, on the other side of your wall?

In Praise of the Shadow (excerpt)

Author: Jorge Luis Borges.

Old age (such is the name that others give it)

it may be the time of our bliss.

The animal has died or almost died.

Are the man and his soul.

I live between bright and vague forms

that are not yet darkness.

Buenos Aires, that before was torn in suburbs

towards the unceasing plain, It has returned to being Recoleta, Retiro,

the blurred streets of Once

and the shabby old houses

that we still call the South.

Always in my life there were too many things;

Democritus of Abdera gouged out his eyes to think;

time has been my Democritus.

This gloom is slow and painless;

flows down a gentle slope

And it looks like eternity

The wheel of the hungry (fragment)

Author: Cesar Vallejo.

Through my own teeth I come out smoking,

shouting, pushing, pulling down my pants…

Empty my stomach, empty my jejunum, misery takes me out through my own teeth, caught with a stick by the cuff of the shirt.

A stone to sit on

Won't there be now for me?

Even that stone on which the woman who has given birth stumbles, the mother of the lamb, the cause, the root,

Will there not be now for me?

Even that other one,

that has passed stooping for my soul!

Either the calcarid or the bad (humble ocean)

or the one that no longer serves even to be thrown against man

Give it to me now for me!

Even the one they find crossed and alone in an insult, Give it to me now for me!

Even the crooked and crowned one, in which it resounds

only once the walk of upright consciences, or, at least, that other one, thrown in a dignified curve,

it's going to fall by itself,

in profession of true heart,

Give it to me now for me!…

Butterfly

Author: Nicolás Guillén.

I would like to make a verse that had

Spring rhythm;

that it was like a fine rare butterfly, like a butterfly that flies

over your life, and candid and light

will roll over your warm body

warm palm tree

and at last his absurd flight will rest

–Like a blue rock in the prairie–

about the pretty rose on your face…

I would like to make a verse that had

all the fragrance of spring

and what a rare butterfly will flutter

about your life, about your body, about your face.

How not to be romantic and the 19th century

Author: Nicolás Guillén.

How not to be romantic and XIX century, I'm not sorry

how not to be musset

seeing her this afternoon

lying almost bloodless,

speaking from afar,

far from beyond the depths of herself,

of mild, soft, sad things.

Shorts well shorts

let you see their arrested thighs

almost powerful, but her sick lung blouse

convalescent

as much as his neck-fine-Modigliani, as much as her skin-daisy-wheat-light, Margarita again (so precise), on the occasional chaise longue stretched out

occasional by the phone, they give me back a transparent bust

(Nothing, no more a little tired).

It's Saturday on the street, but in vain.

Oh, how to love her in a way

not break me

of so foam so sonnet and madrigal, I'm leaving I don't want to see her

from so Musset and 19th century

how not to be romantic.

The water mirror

Author: Vicente Huidobro.

My mirror, current at night, It becomes a stream and moves away from my room.

My mirror, deeper than the orb

Where all the swans drowned.

It's a green pond in the wall

And your anchored nakedness sleeps in the middle.

On its waves, under sleepwalking skies, My dreams drift away like ships.

Standing in the stern you will always see me singing.

A secret rose swells in my chest

And a drunken nightingale flaps on my finger.

Poem 18 (fragment)

Author: Vicente Huidobro.

Here I am on the edge of space and far from circumstances

I go tenderly like a light

Towards the road of appearances

I will sit on my father's knee again

A beautiful spring cooled by the fan of wings

When the fish undo the curtain of the sea

And the void swells for a possible look

I will return on the waters of heaven

I like to travel like the ship of the eye

that comes and goes with every blink

I have already touched the threshold six times

of the infinite that the wind encloses

Nothing in life

except for a shout in front

nervous oceanic what misfortune pursues us

in the urn of impatient flowers

the emotions are in a defined rhythm

I am all man

The man wounded by who knows who

For a lost arrow of chaos

Huge terrain human

Yes inordinate and I proclaim it without fear

Inordinate because I'm not a bourgeois or a weary race

I'm barbarian maybe

Inordinate sick

Barbarian clean of routines and marked paths

I do not accept your comfortable safety seats…

Spring in sight

Author: Octavio Paz.

Polished clear stone clarity, smooth front of statue without memory:

winter sky, reflected space

in another deeper and emptier.

The sea hardly breathes, it hardly shines.

The light has stopped among the trees, sleeping army. Wakes them up

the wind with flags of foliage.

It rises from the sea, storms the hill, disembodied swell that bursts

against the yellow eucalyptus

and spills in echoes across the plain.

The day opens your eyes and penetrates

in an early spring.

Everything my hands touch, flies.

The world is full of birds.

The branch

Author: Octavio Paz.

Sing at the tip of the pine

a bird stopped, tremulous, on his trill.

It stands, arrow, on the branch,

fades between wings

and in music it spills.

The bird is a splinter

that sings and burns alive

on a yellow note.

I lift my eyes: there is nothing.

Silence on the branch

on the broken branch.

And our bread

Author: Juan Carlos Onetti.

I only know about you

the gioconda smile

with parted lips

the mistery

my stubborn obsession

to unveil it

and go stubborn

and surprised

feeling your past

I only know

the sweet milk of your teeth

the placid and mocking milk

that separates me

and forever

of imagined paradise

of the impossible tomorrow

of peace and silent bliss

coat and shared bread

of some everyday object

that I could call

our.

Ballad of the absent

Author: Juan Carlos Onetti.

So don't give me a reason please

Do not give consciousness to nostalgia,

Despair and gambling.

Thinking about you and not seeing you

Suffer in you and not raise my cry

Ruminate alone, thanks to you, because of me, In the only thing that can be

Entirely thought

Call without voice because God willing

What if He has commitments

If God himself prevents you from answering

With two fingers the salute

Everyday, nocturnal, inevitable

It is necessary to accept loneliness, Comfort twinned

With the smell of a dog, on those humid southern days,

On any return

At any changeable hour of twilight

Your silence…

Flamenco vignettes

Author: Juan Carlos Onetti.

To Manuel Torres

«Child of Jerez»

that has the trunk of a pharaoh

Portrait of Silverio

Franconetti

Between italian

and flamenco, How would i sing

that Silverio?

The thick honey of Italy

with our lemon, I was in deep tears

of the siguiriyero.

His scream was terrible.

Old

they say they bristled

the hair, and the quicksilver opened

from the mirrors.

I went through the tones

without breaking them.

And he was a creator

and a gardener.

A roundabout maker

for silence.

Now your melody

sleep with the echoes.

Definitive and pure

With the last echoes!

Norm and black paradise

Author: Federico García Lorca.

They hate the shadow of the bird

on the high tide of the white cheek

and the conflict of light and wind

in the cold snow hall.

They hate the arrow without a body, the exact handkerchief of the farewell, the needle that maintains pressure and rose

in the grass blush of the smile.

They love the blue desert, the vacillating bovine expressions, the lying moon of the poles.

the curving dance of the water on the shore.

With the science of the trunk and the trail

fill the clay with luminous nerves

and they skate lubricious through waters and sands

savoring the bitter freshness of his millenary saliva…

Sunrise

Author: Federico García Lorca.

My heavy heart

feel next to the dawn

the pain of their loves

and the dream of distances.

The light of dawn carries

hotbed of nostalgia

and sadness without eyes

of the marrow of the soul.

The great grave of the night

her black veil lifts

to hide with the day

the immense starry summit.

What will I do about these fields

picking up nests and branches, surrounded by the dawn

and fill the soul with night!

What will I do if you have your eyes

dead in the clear lights

and it must not feel my flesh

the warmth of your looks!

Why did i lose you forever

on that clear afternoon?

Today my chest is dry

like an extinguished star.

Every song

Author: Federico García Lorca.

Every song

it's a haven

of love.

Each star, a haven

weather.

A knot

weather.

And every sigh

a haven

of the scream.

Forever

Author: Mario Benedetti.

Poem for an eternal love.

If the emerald were dull, if the gold lost its color, then our love would end.

If the sun did not warm, if the moon did not exist, then it would not make sense to live on this earth, just as it would not make sense to live without my life, the woman of my dreams, the one who gives me joy…

If the world did not turn or time did not exist, then it would never die, neither would our love…

But time is not necessary, our love is eternal, we do not need the sun, the moon or the stars to continue loving us…

If life were another and death came, then, I would love you today, tomorrow… forever… still.

Let's make a Deal

Author: Mario Benedetti.

An irresistible poem to confess a selfless love.

Partner, you know you can count on me, not up to two or even ten, but count on me.

If you ever notice that I look at you in the eye and you recognize a streak of love in mine, do not alert your rifles, or think that I am delirious.

Despite that streak of unsuspecting love, you know you can count on me.

But let's make a definitive deal, I would like to have you.

It is so nice to know that you exist, one feels alive.

I mean to count from two to five, not just so that you can rush to my aid, but to know and thus be calm, that you know you can count on me.

At the foot from his child (fragment)

Author: Pablo Neruda.

The child's foot does not yet know what it is, and wants to be a butterfly or an apple.

But then the glass and the stones, the streets, the stairs, and the roads of the hard earth

They teach the foot that it cannot fly

that it cannot be round fruit on a branch.

The child's foot then

was defeated, fell

In the battle, he was a prisoner,

condemned to live in a shoe.

Little by little without light

he got to know the world in his own way, without knowing the other foot, locked up, exploring life like a blind man…

Love

Author: Pablo Neruda.

Woman, I would have been your son, for drinking you

the milk of the breasts like a spring,

for looking at you and feeling you by my side and having you

in the golden laugh and the crystal voice.

For feeling you in my veins like God in the rivers

and adore you in the sad bones of dust and lime, because your being will pass without pain by my side

and came out in the stanza -clean of all evil-.

How would I know how to love you, woman, how would I know

love you, love you like no one ever knew!

Die and still

love you more.

And yet

love you more

and more.

The love that is silent

Author: Gabriela Mistral.

If I hated you, my hate would give you

In words, resounding and sure;

But I love you and my love does not trust

To this talk of men so dark!

You would like it to become a scream,

And it comes from so deep that it has undone

Its burning stream, fainted, Before the throat, before the chest.

I am the same as a full pond

And I seem to you an inert fountain.

All for my troubled silence

Which is more atrocious than entering death!

References

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5. Avant-garde poetry of the twentieth century. Recovered from estudioraprender.com.
6. Vanguard, Total Transformation. Recovered from vanguardistasecuador.blogspot.com.ar
7. Neruda. Recovered from Neruda.uchile.cl.
8. Ode to Rubén Darío. Recovered from poesi.as.
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12. Marxists (s / f). Poems of Vallejo. Recovered from: marxists.org
13. My bookstore (2010). Five love poems by Nicolás Guillén. Recovered from: milibreria.wordpress.com
14. Norfi (s / f). Love poems by Mario Benedetti. Recovered from: norfipc.com
15. Poeticous (s / f). Juan Carlos Onetti. Recovered from: poeticous.com
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