Radical Poetry: Aesthetics, Politics, Technology, and the Ibero-American Avant-Gardes, 1900-2015

348 Pages·2016·7.81 MB·English

by  Eduardo Ledesma

Radical Poetry
SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture
Jorge J. E. Gracia and Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal, editors
Radical Poetry
Aesthetics, Politics, Technology,
and the
Ibero-American Avant-Gardes,
1900–2015
Eduardo Ledesma
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Production, Emily Keneston
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ledesma, Eduardo, 1972– author.
Title: Radical poetry : aesthetics, politics, technology, and the
Ibero-American avant-gardes, 1900–2015 / Eduardo Ledesma.
Description: Albany, New York : State University of New York Press, 2016. |
Series: SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000471 | ISBN 9781438462011 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438462028 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Experimental poetry, Latin American—History and criticism. |
Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—Latin America. | Modernism (Literature)—Latin
America.
Classification: LCC PQ7082.P7 L446 2016 | DDC 861.009/98—dc23 LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016000471
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: An Overview 1
1. The Historical Avant-Gardes: Futurist Metaphors 19
2. The Sixties Neo-Avant-Gardes: A Political Turn 53
3. Digital Poetry and Metaphor’s Reprise: 81
An Introduction to Digital Poetry
4. Modernisms on the Move: Mechanic, Kinetic, Cinematic 109
5. Letters and Lettrism: Deconstructing the New Vanguards 147
6. Latin American Digital Poetry: Animated Embodiment 171
7. Modernismo: Cannibalistic Appropriation and Advertisement 197
8. Concrete Aesthetics: Abstraction, Mass Media, and Ideology 223
9. Luso-Brazilian E-Poetry and Performance 251
Conclusion: Toward a Radical Aesthetics of the Digital? 281
Notes 289
Works Cited 309
Index 331
v

Figures
Figure 1.1: Josep M. Junoy. “A Portrait of Ynglada” 27
Figure 1.2: José Juan Tablada. “The Chirimoyo Tree” 41
Figure 1.3: José Juan Tablada. Fragment from “Li-Po” 49
Figure 2.1: Clemente Padín. “Signografía I” 62
Figure 2.2: Clemente Padín. “Inobjetal I” 67
Figure 2.3: Edgardo Antonio Vigo. “Ninth Signaling” 75
Figure 3.1: Jordi Pope. “Communication Systems” 87
Figure 3.2: Jordi Pope. “Atoms” 89
Figure 3.3: Jordi Pope. “Mathematical Poem” 92
Figure 3.4: Olga Delgado. “The Woman Who Walks” 99
Figure 3.5: Olga Delgado. “Island” 102
Figure 4.1: Francesco Cangiullo. “Smoker” 122
Figure 4.2: Joan Salvat-Papasseit. “Wedding March” 129
Figure 4.3: Joan Salvat-Papasseit. “Connubi” 138
Figure 4.4: Joan Salvat-Papasseit. “Edisson, Charlot” 143
Figure 5.1: Joan Brossa. “Disassembly” 153
Figure 5.2: Julio Campal. “Calligram” 161
Figure 5.3 Fernando Millán. “Negative Progression/2” 165
vii
viii Figures
Figure 6.1: Ana María Uribe. “A Herd of Centaurs” 177
Figure 6.2: Ana María Uribe. “Discipline” 179
Figure 6.3: María Mencía. Cityscapes 185
Figure 6.4: María Mencía. Cityscapes 186
Figure 7.1: Cover for magazine Klaxon 212
Figure 7.2: Guilherme de Almeida. “Coma Lacta” 218
Figure 8.1: Décio Pignatari. “beba coca cola” 237
Figure 9.1: Arnaldo Antunes. Live Performance “Nome” 261
Figure 9.2: Eduardo Kac. “D/eu/s” 270
Figure 9.3: Eduardo Kac. “Não!” 273
Acknowledgments
This project would have been impossible without the support of many generous
individuals and institutions. I wish to express my deep gratitude to my professors
at Harvard University, and also at the University of Illinois-Chicago, for guiding
me as a young scholar through my transition from structural engineer to literature,
film, and new media professor, and for offering advice at various stages of this
project. I am grateful to my committee, Brad Epps, Luis Fernández-Cifuentes,
Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, and David Rodowick, for their tireless reading and
for nurturing this project in its initial stages. I am especially indebted to Brad
Epps, my thesis director, for his unfailing and constant support and friendship
throughout the years, as well as his invaluable guidance during my dissertation
writing. My very warmest thanks to Leda Schiavo, who suggested to me (in my
first-ever literature class at the University of Illinois at Chicago) that, yes, one could
indeed make a profession of that which one loved, the study of culture, initiating me
on this path. To Matthew J. Marr (now at Penn State), for his constant counsel and
friendship from my very first days at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Likewise
to Rosilie Hernández, Christian Roa, Margarita Saona, Klaus Müller-Bergh, and
all my other professors at UIC. At Harvard, many thanks to Mariano Siskind and
Sergio Delgado, who counseled me on many academic matters. I would also like
to thank my wonderful colleagues and friends in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who have generously
shared their advice and expertise, especially Mariselle Meléndez for her stead-
fast guidance and mentorship, our department chair, Silvina Montrul, and also
my literature colleagues Ericka Beckman, Elena Delgado, Dara Goldman, Glen
Goodman, Javier Irigoyen-García, and Joyce Tolliver, as well as Luciano Tosta (now
at the University of Kansas), and of course, all the other colleagues at Illinois, too
many to mention. My thanks also to our energetic graduate students at Illinois,
especially those that endured my graduate seminar on experimental poetry and
art in the fall of 2014 and provided intelligent feedback. To many other colleagues
ix