CUBIST POEMS BY THE MOST OUTSTANDING AUTHORS - ART - 2025

The cubist poems had their most representative figure of Apollinaire, who adapted the Cubism painting to literature. He contributed the surrealist way of writing, breaking the syntax and logical structure in his poems, making use of and giving leading importance to color, typography, drawings made with words and letters in different shapes, empty, etc.

This is called "calligrams" or "ideograms", and is what is currently known as "visual poetry". Cubism was born in France at the beginning of the 19th century, having its maximum representation in painting, but it also influenced all branches of culture.

It was an artistic trend that drastically and forcefully broke the established canons.

List of representative poems of cubism

Recognize yourself - Apollinaire

This poem written in the form of a calligram, is arranged around the figure of his beloved reproduced in a photograph.

In it, he can be seen wearing a straw hat that a beginning designer had made very fashionable at that time: Coco Chanel.

Its translation is more or less as follows: Recognize yourself, this beautiful person is you, under the hat. Your exquisite neck (form the neck and left shoulder). And this is finally, the imperfect image, image of your adored bust seen through a cloud (right part of your body), a little lower is your beating heart (left part of the body).

Horse - Apollinaire

Actually this calligram is part of a series of letters that Apollinaire and his lover Lou exchanged during World War I, in which the poet served.

They were fiery and very erotic letters and poems, which when they came to light caused a stir and censorship.

The Dagger - José Juan Tablada

Tablada was a Mexican writer and poet who developed his prolific material at the time of the Mexican Revolution. With avant-garde orientation, he cultivated haiku (Japanese poetry) and also ideograms, influenced by Apollinaire.

Girándula - Guillermo de la Torre

De la Torre was a Spanish poet who was born at the beginning of the 20th century and who was married to the sister of the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges.

Shrinking text - Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Cuban writer born in 1929. Film critic and journalist, diplomat in the early years of the Castro government, then a dissident, asylee and British national. He passed away in 2005.

Havana Impression - José Juan Tablada

The stabbed pigeon and the spout - Apollinaire

Sweet stabbed figures, expensive flowery lips,

MIA, MAREYE, YETTE, LORIE, ANNIE and you, MARIE,

where are you girls,

BUT near a fountain that cries and prays,

this dove is ecstatic.

All the memories of yesteryear

Oh my friends who went to war

Gush towards the sky

And your glances in the sleeping water They

die melancholy.

Where are Braque and Max Jacob

Derain with the gray eyes as dawn?

Where are Raynal, Billy, Dalize

Whose names become melancholy

Like steps in a church?

Where is Cremnitz who enlisted?

Perhaps they are already dead

Of memories my soul is full

The fountain cries over my grief

THOSE WHO STARTED TO THE WAR OF THE NORTH FIGHT NOW

The night falls OH bloody sea

Gardens where the pink laurel warrior flower bleeds abundantly

Paris - Apollinaire

A poem written following the silhouette of the popular Eiffel Tower. Here it is translated into Spanish.

The Moon-José Juan Tablada

The black night is sea, the cloud is a shell, the moon is a pearl.

Express-Vicente Huidobro

I would make myself a crown

Of all the cities traveled

London Madrid Paris

Rome Naples Zurich

They whistle in the plains

Seaweed covered locomotives

Here nobody has found

of all the rivers navigated

I would make myself a necklace

The Amazon The Seine

The Thames The Rhine

One hundred wise vessels

Who have folded their wings

And my orphan sailor song

Saying goodbye to the beaches

Breathe in the scent of Monte Rosa

Braiding the wandering gray of Monte Blanco

And about the Zenit del Monte Cenis

Ignite in the dying sun

The last cigar

A hiss pierces the air

It is not a water game

Ahead

Gibbous pennines

They march into the desert

The stars of the oasis

They will give us honey from their dates

In the mountain

The wind makes the rigging creak

And all the mountains dominated

Well loaded volcanoes

They will lift the anchor.

Gathering of Pompo-Guillermo de la Torre

This cafe has some talanquera

and third-rate wagon.

There is not much tobacco and there is a lot of smoke.

I –the ninth Spanish poet– presume

in front of the Mayor of Zafra, who mourns his gray hair

(eleven ink piastres every week).

Fan. Portuguese.

Accent of Seville, golden city!

And my Bilbao stoker.

Waiter!

Coffee with milk, half and half.

Shouts Llovet. Hush Bacarisse.

Solana consecrates.

If Peñalver speaks, it seems that a hinge is opening.

León Felipe, duel!

Does not have

neither

homeland

neither

chair

nor grandfather;

Duel! Duel! Duel!

I give you a consolation, a

handkerchief

and

other

handkerchief.

Arrives

Monsieur Lasso de la Vega.

Il vient de diner a l'Hôtel Ritz.

Il sait bien son rôle.

Et il porte sa fleur.

Parole

d'honneur!

In the corners some couples

security and yellow ladies

they look at Torre and shudder

the guards and the old women

he quotes them to flags

with the ears.

Endless discussion

on whether Valle Inclán is ultraist

what if patatín

that if patatán.

A trin bell rings at the counter.

trin. trin. triiinn.

a few pay and all leave.

. Silence, shade, cockroaches under the couch.

The islands arose from the ocean-Guillermo Cabrera Infante

The islands arose from the ocean, first as isolated islets, then the keys became mountains and the low waters, valleys. Later the islands came together to form a large island that soon turned green where it was not golden or reddish. Small islands continued to emerge, now made keys, and the island became an archipelago: a long island next to a large round island surrounded by thousands of small islands, islets and even other islands. But since the long island had a definite shape, it dominated the whole and no one has seen the archipelago, preferring to call the island an island and forget about the thousands of keys, islets, and islets that border the large island like clots of a long green wound.

There is the island, still emerging from between the ocean and the gulf: there it is.

Poems of sea foam… -Juan Gris (Jose V. Gonzalez)

You whistled a night, it slipped, still lifes, hidden guitars

bows of pipe and mandolin, chasms between face and face.

In the eyes of a sitting woman

you dream Paris in its monochrome, music, painters and poetry, and its segmented gray dwellings.

You were breaking down from the windows

the gray and the ocher on cut paper,

You gave volume by folding hinges.

You took care of the verses of Manuel Machado, let no one strip you of your "Soul."

You waged an escaped man's war.

The bottle of anise in the still lifes of Juan Gris-Juan gris (Jose V. Gonzalez)

Those were the times of monkey anise

and the intoxication of manners.

The painting, as is. With cubism

the bottle of anise changed tone.

Juan Gris was his dealer and his employer.

First lady of still life,

the anise bottle is no longer the same

sitting among colors on her throne.

A table, a blue, or just nothing, than painting when it is invented

it is more beautiful the other way around.

And, fully intellectualized, the bottle of anise, listen carefully

what a French newspaper tells.

I and II-Pablo Picasso

(I)

I saw leave

tonight

of the concert

in the Gaveau room

to the last

person

and then I walked away down the same street and went to the tobacconist

look for matches

(II)

mirror in your cork frame thrown into the sea among the waves you do not see only the lightning, the sky and the clouds with your mouth open ready to swallow the sun but if a bird passes by and for a moment lives in your gaze it instantly runs out of eyes fallen into the blind sea and what laughter at that precise moment comes from the waves.

The City-Max Jacob

Do not stop

cloud over the horrible city

everything there feels the fish

asphalt and groceries.

Beautiful silver cloud

don't stop over the city

Look at those people

Can you see more vile faces?

They have not stolen

nor have they killed their brothers

but they are willing to do so.

Blue says up there

Glitter for flowers and herbs

and for the birds

Shine for the proud trees.

Shine for the saints

for the children, for the innocent

for those I pity

for living with the fratricides.

For them the Eternal Father

gave splendor to the fields

for them is heaven

consolation of the Humble.

Gates of Hell-Max Jacob

The hunting horn calls like a bell

just like a color in the woods.

The far horn of rock-shaped trees.

It's the unicorn hunt

come with us we are your friends.

The path is marked by the horse

and the saddle

horse and saddle tied to the trees

They sit at the table in front of the house

each one is put to their liking

to eat lobster and mayonnaise

Come! your friends call you.

But I heard screams that came from the house

and then they sat me before shiny bottles

I realized that I didn't know anyone.

And those screams of pain that came from the house

they mixed with the talks, with the songs.

In the distance the rooster crowed like a laugh.

My good angel whispered in my ear: be careful!

Too late the earth was already shaking under my feet.

Lord, help me, help me, my God!

A madman who has gone mad-Francis Picabia

The moon has laid down in a fireplace

it was cold in the street

i hear the rain

I'm sitting waiting for nothing

I have found one

I'm looking for two

two leaves for the crown

inheritance

of the lonely ghost

that crawls into love

To empty my heart

Vréneli-Francis Picabia

Vréneli's room

where we lived

had pink wallpaper

a tufted peach damask bed

a pendulum clock pointed to noon

Or midnight since yesterday

she undressed

a bit like an english

her dress had diagonals

and pictures.

It's Only Mine-Marc Chagall

It's only mine

the town that is in my soul.

I enter there without a passport

like at home.

He knows my sadness

and my loneliness.

He gives me sleep

and covers me with a stone

scented.

Gardens flourish in me.

My flowers are made up.

The streets belong to me

but there are no houses;

they were destroyed from childhood

Its inhabitants roam the air

looking for accommodation.

But they live in my soul.

That's why i smile

when my sun barely shines

or cry

like light rain at night.

There was a time when I had two heads.

There was a time when my two faces

they covered themselves with a vapor in love

and they faded like the perfume of a rose.

Today it seems to me

that even when I go back

I'm going forward

towards a high portal

behind which the walls stand

where extinguished thunder sleeps

and folded lightning.

It's only mine

the town that is in my olma.

To the martyred artists (fragment) -Marc Chagall

Did I meet them all? I was

to your workshops? Did i see your art

near or far?

Now I leave myself, my time, I'm going to his unknown grave

They call me, they drag me to the bottom

from his hole - to me the innocent - to me the guilty.

They ask me "Where were you?" I fled.

They were taken to the corner of their death

and there they ate their own sweat.

There they managed to see the light

of his unpainted canvases.

They counted the years not lived, watched and expected…

Cruel Firstfruits-Jean Cocteau

An arrow sometimes heals a sick heart.

Hallucinations, open this sea urchin for me

marinal. I also want to be the doctor

jewel thief to open a grenade.

The Holy Virgin sent this drawing

from miraculous blue to every comrade

no word was said before entering;

it was a little to the left, under the breast.

Dream, why lie? If you need hostages

here is the pot, mound of strata

perfumed and the plot and the egg of the scorpions.

If the customs officer increases the crack

with grenades, simulating suits, put his hand in all the rubies of the Infanta.

Dogs bark in the distance-Jean Cocteau

The dogs bark in the distance and, nearby, the rooster crows.

It's the way you are, oh! naughty nature

But April changes everything the next morning

dresses the ripe fruit trees in soft satin, stains the vineyard and the butterfly with sulfur hues, in the nectar of the rose he intoxicates the bumblebees, and knot the bonds of love unleashed.

Thus sings a poet loved by wild gods, And that, like Jano, has several mouths.

Haikus-José Juan Tablada

The spider

Going through his fabric

this very clear moon

has the spider awake.

Saúz

Tender saúz

almost gold, almost amber,

almost light…

The geese

Geese for nothing

they sound alarm

on their trumpets of clay.

The peacock

Peacock, long glow, by the democratic chicken coop

you pass like a procession.

The turtle

Although he never moves

tumbling, like a moving car, the turtle goes down the path.

Dry leaves

The garden is full of dry leaves;

I never saw so many leaves on your trees

green, in spring.

The toads

Chunks of mud

along the dark path, The toads jump.

The bat

The flights of the swallow

the bat rehearses in the shadow

to then fly during the day…?

Night butterfly

Return to the bare branch, night butterfly, the dry leaves of your wings.

Fireflies

Fireflies in a tree…

Christmas in summer?

The Nightingale

Under the celestial dread

rave about the only star

the song of the nightingale.

Moon

The moon is a spider

silver

that has its web

in the river that portrays her.

Scarecrow-Oliverio Girondo

I don't give a damn that women

have breasts like magnolias or fig raisins;

a peach or sandpaper complexion.

I give it an importance equal to zero, to the fact that they wake up with an aphrodisiac breath

or with an insecticidal breath.

I am perfectly capable of bearing them

a nose that would win the first prize

at an exhibition of carrots;

But yes! -and in this I am irreducible

- I do not forgive you, under any pretext, that you do not know how to fly.

If they don't know how to fly, those who try to seduce me are wasting their time!

This was - and no other - the reason that I fell in love, so madly, from María Luisa.

What did I care about her serial lips and her sulphurous jealousies?

What did I care about his webbed limbs

and your forecast looks reserved?

Maria Luisa was a real feather!

From dawn I flew from the bedroom to the kitchen,

I flew from the dining room to the pantry.

Flying I would prepare my bath, my shirt.

Flying made their purchases, their chores…

With what impatience did I wait for him to return, flying, of some walk around!

Far away, lost in the clouds, a little pink dot.

"Maria Luisa! María Luisa! »… ​​And after a few seconds,

she was already hugging me with her feather legs, to take me, flying, anywhere.

For miles of silence we planned a caress

that brought us closer to paradise;

for hours we nestled in a cloud, like two angels, and suddenly, in corkscrew, in dead leaf, the crash landing of a spasm.

What a delight to have such a light woman…

although it makes us see, from time to time, the stars!

What a voluptuousness to spend your days in the clouds…

the one to spend the nights of a single flight!

After meeting an ethereal woman, Can an earthly woman offer us some kind of attractiveness?

Is it true that there is no substantial difference

between living with a cow or with a woman

that his buttocks are twenty-eight centimeters from the ground?

I, at least, am unable to understand

the seduction of a pedestrian woman, and no matter how hard I try to conceive it, I can't even imagine

that love can be made more than flying.

Interlunio (fragment) -Oliverio Girondo

I see him, leaning against a wall, his eyes almost

phosphorescent, and at the feet, a more hesitant shadow, more tattered than a tree.

How to explain your tiredness, that aspect of home

groped and anonymous who only know objects

condemned to the worst humiliations?…

Would it suffice to admit that your muscles preferred

relax to endure the proximity of a skeleton capable of

age the newly released suits?… Or will we have to

persuade us that its very artificiality ended

give it the appearance of a mannequin crammed into a

back room?…

Eyelashes ravaged by the unhealthy weather of their

pupils, he would go to the cafe where we met, and

one end of the table, looked at us as though through a

insect cloud.

It is undoubted that without the need for an instinct

archaeological developed, it would have been easy to verify that

exaggerated, inordinately, when describing the fascinating

seduction of its attractions, with impudence and impunity

with which the disappeared is remembered… but the wrinkles and

the patina that corroded these vestiges gave it a

decrepitude as premature as that suffered by buildings

public…

Visit-Oliverio Girondo

I'm not.

I don't know her.

I don't want to meet her.

I hate the hollow, The love of mystery

The cult of ash, How much it disintegrates.

I have never had contact with the inert.

If of something I have rengade is about indiference.

I do not aspire to transmute myself, Nor does rest tempt me.

The absurd and the fun still intregues me.

I am not for the immobile, For the uninhabited.

When you come to find me

Tell him:

"has moved".

She-Vicente Huidobro

She took two steps forward

Took two steps back

The first step said good morning sir

The second step said good morning ma'am

And the others said how is the family

Today is a beautiful day like a dove in the sky

She wore a burning shirt

She had seas numbing eyes

She had hidden a dream in a dark closet

She had found a dead man in the middle of her head

When she arrived she left a more beautiful part far away

When she left, something formed on the horizon to wait for her

Their gazes were wounded and bleeding over the hill

Her breasts were open and she sang the darkness of her age

It was beautiful like a sky under a dove

Had a mouth of steel

And a deadly flag drawn between the lips

He laughed like the sea that feels coals in its belly

Like the sea when the moon watches itself drown

Like the sea that has bitten all the beaches

The sea that overflows and falls into emptiness in times of plenty

When the stars coo over our heads

Before the north wind opens its eyes

It was beautiful in its horizons of bones

With his burning shirt and his weary tree stares

Like heaven riding on doves

Reason-Juan Larrea

Succession of eloquent sounds moved to radiance, poem

it is this

and that

and that

And this that comes to me as innocence today, that exists

because i exist

and because the world exists

and because the three of us can properly cease to exist.

Thorns when it snows-Juan Larrea

In an orchard of Fray Luis

Dream me dream me quickly star of earth

cultivated by my eyelids take me by my shadow handles

allocate me with marble wings burning star star among my ashes

To be able to finally find the statue under my smile

of a sunny afternoon the gestures on the water

winter blossom eyes

You who in the bedroom of the wind are watching

the innocence of depending on the flying beauty

that betrays itself in the ardor with which the leaves turn towards the weaker chest.

You who assume light and abyss on the edge of this flesh

that falls to my feet like a wounded vividness

You who are lost in jungles of error.

Suppose that in my silence lives a dark rose with no way out and without struggle.

Other poems of interest

Poems of Romanticism.

Avant-garde poems.

Poems of Realism.

Poems of Futurism.

Poems of Classicism.

Poems of Neoclassicism.

Poems of the Baroque.

Poems of Modernism.

Poems of Dadaism.

Poems of the Renaissance.

References

1. Guillaume Apollinaire's calligram at the Culture Chanel Exhibition. Recovered from trendencia.com.
2. Calligrams. Recovered from leerparaverlassalinas.blogspot.com.ar.
3. First Spanish edition of the letters to Lou de Apollinaire. Recovered from elcorreogallego.es.
4. The pigeon stabbed at the spout. Recovered from ambitoasl.blogspot.com.ar.
5. Guillaume Apollinaire: 2 calligrams. Recovered from cartographers.blogspot.com.ar.
6. Calligrams: Imagine without limits. Recovered from caligramasinlimites.blogspot.com.ar.
7. Vicente Huidobro. Recovered from memoriachilena.cl.
8. Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Biography. Recovered from cervantes.es.
9. José Juan Tablada. Recovered from biografiasyvidad.com.