Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Echavarren and Donald Wellman. "In CADAVERS, his long poem on the desaparecidos--the disappeared victims of Argentina's military dictatorship--Perlongher does not seek to return their presence or whereabouts to those unnamed, absent corpses, but to restore their corporeity to them. He does so by means of a poetic language that can be as coarse and funny as it is ornate, bringing together such disparate elements as G--ngora's Baroque and the neighborhood hair salon, Rubén Dar'o's Modernismo and Argentine public elementary schools. "Legend has it that Perlongher wrote his poem on the interminable bus trip from Buenos Aires to São Paulo that would take him into exile from a regime that had paradoxically criminalized him not for his fierce political activism, but for his militant homosexuality. This gorgeous translation by Roberto Echavarren and Donald Wellman retraces Perlongher's journey, and finally brings his great poem to an English-speaking audience."--Ezequiel Zaidenwerg Poetry. Latinx Studies. LGBTQIA Studies.

"The Argentine Nestor Perlongher was a groundbreaking poet and anthropologist whose work takes on the most dynamic and conflictive themes of modern-day Latin America. His poetry addresses issues of dictatorship, national identity, exile, transvestism and marginal sexualities, and modern-day esoteric religions while his anthropological work challenged the very limits of the human being and attacked the most entrenched of contemporary taboos." "Nestor Perlongher: The Poetic Search for an Argentine Marginal Voice is a vital addition to our understanding of the difficult work of this poet, for two reasons. First, Perlongher was a pioneer in a number of fields: sexual rights, urban anthropology, the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, esoteric religions and, crucially, modern Plate River poetry. This work is the first in English to comprehensively address this provocative and innovative oeuvre. Secondly, Perlongher's difficult, highly allusive and linguistically challenging poetry creates problems of reading and interpretation for any researcher. Ben Bollig draws on a wealth of historical, cultural and social research about contemporary Argentina, providing a rich background against which to assess Perlongher's work. The detailed close readings of the poems themselves offer ways into Perlongher's work and methodological tools for the study of difficult poetry."--BOOK JACKET.

Plebeian Prose is a key work by the pioneering Argentine Brazilian anthropologist, sociologist and poet Néstor Perlongher. Perlongher, whose work has been highly influential in the development of Latin American cultural theory and literature, represents an original critical ‘queer’ voice in Latin American thought. This book is an exploration of the politics of desire, questions of identity, Latin American neo-baroque aesthetics, sexual dissidence, violence and jouissance. Prompted by his reading of Gilles Deleuze, the link between politics and desire remains central to all Perlongher’s reflections and gives his writings a lasting topicality. A thinker of the streets with a keen interest in those on the margins of society, the ideas that are developed in this book offer a lucid critique of capitalism and institutional power. Perlongher’s approach also reflects a particular Latin American neo-baroque style, a mode of critique whose value endures today. Providing insight into Latin American culture and politics of the late twentieth century, Plebeian Prose will be of particular interest to anyone working on critical theory, literary theory, anthropology, sociology and gender studies.

DIVAn interdisciplinary anthology that includes many primary materials never before published in English./div

Poets on the Edge critically explores the relationship between poetry and its context through the work of four Latin American poets: Chilean Vicente Huidobro (1898-1948), Peruvian César Vallejo (1893-1938), Chilean Juan Luis Martínez (1943-1993), and Argentine Néstor Perlongher (1949-1992). While Huidobro and Vallejo establish their poetics on the edge in the context of worldwide conflagrations and the emergence of the historical avant-garde during the first half of the twentieth century, Martínez and Perlongher produce their work in the context of the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships respectively, developing different strategies to overcome the panoptic societies of control installed throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Martínez recreates the avant-garde tradition in a playful manner to avoid censorship and also proposes a philosophical poetics to stage a utopian project oriented toward redesigning the house of civilization that has fallen apart. Perlongher unfolds his peculiar Neobaroque sensitivity in order to reshape the complex Latin American identities, culminating his poetic project with two collections written under the influence of ayahuasca-based ceremonies. Poets on the Edge offers the reader a new understanding of the hybrid and edgy nature of Latin American poetics and subjectivity as well as of the evolution of poetry written in Spanish during the twentieth century.

Delves into the reasons why people with disabilities regularly encounter prejudice, ignorance and fear. A strident voice on the subject of access, education, expectations, public transport, parenting and employment, Peace posits the problem firmly in the social sphere, in a world that refuses to allow an equal place for people with disabilities. A personal insight into the next human rights struggle.

Recognized as one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century, José Lezama Lima, born in Cuba in 1910, is associated with the Latin American neo-baroque and has influenced several generations of writers in and out of Cuba, including such prominent poets as Severo Sarduy and Néstor Perlongher. Lezama Lima's vision of America in a continental sense stands at the fertile confluence of indigenous, African, and European influences. A crucial experimental writer, he has been known in English chiefly for his novel Paradiso, while little of his poetry has been translated. This anthology is a comprehensive introduction to Lezama Lima's poetry. It presents for the first time in English a generous selection of his poems, as well as an interview, essays, and critical work on his poetics. Ernesto Livon-Grosman has selected elegant and precise translations by James Irby, G.J. Racz, Nathaniel Tarn, and Roberto Tejada. His insightful introduction places the poet in the wider context of Cuban and Latin American cultural history.

Has poetry lost its relevance in the postmodern age, unable to keep pace with other forms of cultural production such as film, mass media, and the Internet? Quite the contrary, argues Jill Kuhnheim in this pathfinding book, which explores how recent Spanish American poetry participates in the fundamental cultural debates of its time. Using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, Kuhnheim engages in close readings of numerous poetic works to show how contemporary Spanish American poetry struggles with the divisions between politics and aesthetics and between visual and written images; grapples with issues of ethnic, national, sexual, and urban identities; and incorporates rather than rejects technological innovations and elements from the mass media. Her analysis illuminates the ways in which contemporary issues such as indigenismo and Latin America's postcolonial legacy, modernization, immigration, globalization, economic shifts toward neoliberalism and informal economies, urbanization, and the technological revolution have been expressed in—and even changed the very form of—Spanish American poetry since the 1970s.

Publisher Description

Examines Argentina’s most iconic female figures, from saints to pop singers, politicians to anarchists