For other authors of narrative works we will limit ourselves to mentioning A. Azuela (b. 1938), writer of robust vocation, with memories of the more famous grandfather Mexico Azuela; H. Hiriart (b. 1942), from the corrosive and paradoxical writing; B. Jacobs (b. 1947), who has surprising re-enactment skills and good elegiac-type narrative skills; D. Medina (b. 1954), experimental author with an unbridled invention; and J. Villoro (b. 1956), the most lively exponent of the young generation.
As happens in other Latin American countries, the poetic panorama of Mexico is very sumptuous, varied and impressive, almost as if the nearby tradition of the early twentieth century (the one marked and traced by the poets of the Contemporáneosmagazine, which corresponds to the thirties, for up to the forties) has always guided and supported, at least in depth, the production of new authors. And this assertion is so true that there are essentially few differences between the now classic anthology, Poesía en movimiento, México, 1915-1966, compiled in 1966 by O. Paz, Alí Chumacero, JE Pacheco and H. Aridjis, and the very recent La rosa de los vientos, anthology of the poesía mexicana actual, edited by F. Serrano (1992).
Of course, the first of the two starts from further away, that is, it dates back to postmodernist poets and the very early twentieth century, such as R. López Velarde and JJ Tablada (it doesn’t matter now that the chronological order is reverse, since the collection ends with Tablada) ; while the second exhibits a greater number of authors and comes to include very young poets such as J. Hubard, the last of the series, who was born in 1962. But the starting point remains very similar: uniting many different and even contrasting voices and not giving to the adjective ” Mexican ” another connotation than that of ” born in Mexico ”, excluding any local and national flavor or other misleading categories; and similar is also the relative rigor of choice. After all, Hispano-American poetry is now a hardly divisible whole,
The most representative exponents of contemporary lyricism are: Alí Chumacero (b.1918), a poet who feeds on everyday events, on simple and almost worn feelings, but with a verbal concentration which however often opens up to singing, as can now be seen fully in the volume Poetry complete (1980); RB Nuño (b. 1923), who pours into lyric both his familiarity with the Greek classics as well as his knowledge of Aztec cosmology, for example. in Los demonios y los días (1956) and in Albur de amor (1987); J. Sabines (b. 1926), perhaps the most famous and ” accomplished ” poet, clear voice, made up of deep emotions and pain, which starting from the events of the ” alter ego ” Tarumba (1956) and arriving at the decisive and decisive words of Uno es el hombre (1990), it leads to a persistent and tragic sense of death; T. Segovia (b.1927), a good translator of Rimbaud and Ungaretti, a Spanish who settled in Mexico since 1940, one of the many ” exiles ” who are no longer so: but whose condition reads as melancholy and intimacy lacerated in his verses, particularly in his most recent collection, Noticia natural (1991).
MA Montes de Oca (1932) is perhaps the closest poet to the overflowing Latin American voices in the manner of Neruda; but his capacity for evolution is equal to his voracious tendency to metaphorize reality (see, to mention only one of his many books, Altanoche of 1986). Two women, two poetesses should be remembered at this point: R. Castellanos (1925-1974) – who also owed two good novels, one of which (Balún-Canán, 1957), was translated into Italian in 1993 -, who able to express the pain of those who suffer from the weight of hybridisation as well as the personal one of a woman who felt she was wounded within (we refer to the collection of her Poemas, 1956); and U. González de León (b. 1932), who instead passes from a certain verbal experimentalism to a refined eroticism, denoting a good frequenter of French and Italian poetry (as in Plagio II, 1980).
Two other interesting personalities stand out in the rich panorama of Mexican opera: G. Zaid (b.1934), author of brilliant books of various essays, but, as a poet, concise and at the same time disturbing, also in his return to classical meters (Sonetos y canciones, 1992); and G. Deniz (b.1934), also, like Segovia, born in Spain and a Mexican citizen since 1942, perhaps the most gifted of the new poets (his first book of verse, Adrede, is from 1970). In the panorama of recent poetry, thanks to his significant personality also in the field of fiction and literary essays, JE Pacheco (b.1939), a writer with a certain lyrical vocation and with a very clear, serene, profound, often ironic, and always very varied (impossible to cite a single book, perhaps Islas a la drift, 1976). Aridjis has already been mentioned in part as a narrator, but certainly more important is his poetic work, which draws on visionary images and forms, if not really or always apocalyptic, often desolate and desolating, as can be seen in Quemar las naves (1975) and Imágenes para el fin del milenio (1990). Some lyrics by Montes de Oca, Zaid, Pacheco and Aridjis have been translated into Italian in the anthology Young poets of Central America, Mexico and the Antilles(1977).
Dominant themes in the lyrics of poets born between 1940-55 are the memory of the student uprisings of 1968, the impact of the Beatles’ music, cinematographic myths – including that of J. Dean and Mexico Monroe -, other parallel facts and symbols. Among the many names, at least four deserve due mention: E. Cross (b. 1946), F. Serrano (b. 1949), D. Huerta (b. 1949) and F. Morábito, born in 1955 in Alexandria, Egypt. The brief panorama may end with some young people, including LM Aguilar (b.1956) and the aforementioned J. Hubard (b.1962), who show the tendency to return to traditional meters and intimist themes.
In Mexico the theater has always had its own space (for example, in universities) and a good and serious tradition, including avant-garde and variegated experimentalism; and therefore there are not a few authors who have dedicated themselves, exclusively or occasionally, to dramatic writing. Among those who have given valuable or demanding works to the theater we remember at least three names: E. Garro, for the one-act (very popular theatrical genre in Mexico) Un hogar sólido (1957) and the drama Ventura Allende (1978); J. Ibargüengoitia, author of six or seven plays, including El atentado (1963); V. Leñero (b.1933), who devoted himself to the theater more than fiction, and from whom El evangelio de Lucas Gavilán is often quoted(1979) as “an annex in favor of the so-called liberation theology”. C. Solórzano, born in 1922 in Guatemala but always lived in Mexico, and an anthologist of Mexican theater dedicated himself almost exclusively to the theater; E. Carballido (b. 1925); F. Sanchez Mayans (b. 1925); LJ Hernández (b. 1928), of which it is worth mentioning at least La apostasía (1972); and H. Azar (b. 1930), for the single act El corrido de Pablo Damián (1967).
A final mention goes to the non-fiction production, which has always given signs of particular vitality in Mexico, also due to the need on the part of intellectuals to carve out a field as precise and convincing as possible in the search for their own cultural identity, between the pre-Hispanic past, colonial period and the most recent addresses of philosophical, anthropological and sociological thought. A great intellectual opens the century, A. Reyes (1889-1959) and his follower, in a certain sense, is Paz himself, starting from the book El laberinto de la soledad (1950; trans. It., 1982). But here we must not forget L. Zea (b.1912), historian of philosophy and culture as well as a good divulger of ” Mexicanity ” and other problematic themes (his book América en la historia, 1957, with the title Latin America and Western Culture, 1961), author of Discurso desde la marginación y la barbarie (1988). For his polemical and nonconformist charge we note C. Monsiváis (b. 1938), mainly devoted to literary, historical and costume criticism, author of anthologies and essay books. Others, on the other hand, like G. Zaid, tend rather to comment on customs and sociology or, like E. Krause (b. 1935), to the political and committed essay.
