Poetry
Amantes
Not translated into English
Jorge Gaitán Durán · 1959
Synopsis
A short book, in which two naked bodies come together in a city and invent a desire without rest. The poet does not separate the embrace from death: each piece holds the two together, the flesh that takes pleasure and the certainty that it will end. There is no narrative and there are no characters, and no setting other than the bed and the city around it. The language is bare too, without ornament, made of brief, affirmative sentences that ask nothing of anyone.
Context
The collection appeared in 1959 from the press of the review its author edited, after occupying a double issue of it the year before: the two dates circulate for this reason. This review, which critics now compare to the great reviews of ideas of Buenos Aires, Paris and Mexico, published for seven years the writers of the continent and those of Europe, and its editor wrote its editorials. The poets who came after call themselves its heirs as much as of the Medellín movement.
Who it is for
About thirty pages in Spanish, with no complete French translation. Short, explicit poems that can be read in any order.
Prizes and reception
Regarded, together with the following collection, as the high point of his work, and as one of the books that opened erotic poetry in Hispanic America.