Poetry
5 Meters of Poems
5 metros de poemas
Carlos Oquendo de Amat · 1927
Synopsis
Eighteen poems, the author's only book, printed on a strip folded like an accordion which, once unfolded, is 5 metres long. A note invites the reader to open the book as one peels a fruit. The quick lines are set horizontally, vertically, diagonally or in boxes, and move from melancholy to cosmopolitanism and to images drawn from cinema; the title comes from one of them, Réclam.
Context
Written between 1923 and 1925, the poems appeared from Minerva in Lima; the colophon is dated 31 December 1927, but the book circulated only in 1929. Carlos Germán Belli sees in it an echo of Jean Epstein, who announced cinematographic poems. Ranked with Trilce and La casa de cartón among the great works of the avant-garde, it owes its rediscovery to Mario Vargas Llosa, who cited the author when receiving the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1967. Often reissued in facsimile, it has been translated into English, Italian and Asturian, but not into French.
Who it is for
For reading a unique book-object, in which the layout is part of the poem, and going back to the sources of modern Peruvian poetry.
Prizes and reception
Praised for its layout and quick lines, it extends, according to critics, the Latin American avant-garde beyond Neruda and Vallejo.