LUIS PALÉS MATOS (1947)

Poet, considered by many to be Puerto Rico´s most distinguished lyric poet who enriched the vocabulary of Spanish poetry with words, themes, symbols, images and rhythms of African and Afro-American folklore and dance.

Palés Matos wrote his first poetry collected in Azalea (1915) in imitation of the fashionable Modernist trends but soon found his own direction in his personal interpretation (as a white man) of black culture.
His poems published in periodicals on black themes firmly established his literary reputation and gave impetus to the developing concern of Spanis-American with their African heritage.

Palés Matos unlike some of his contemporaries and disciples in what became known as the Negro poetry movement did not strive for authenticity.
He preferred to evoke a culture as a poet rather than as a sociologist.
For this freely inventive approach to black themes he was sometimes criticized by those more concerned with accuracy than with poetic merit.
His ironic, often skeptical note has been interpreted by some as condescension.
His mastery of poetic form and language is acknowledged even by those who find his approach offensive.

Although Palés Matos was best known and most influential for his Negro poetry, his reflective and introspective personality found expression in poetry of many other collection and themes.

Poesia 1915-56 a collection of much of his poetry reveals his more personal side as a lyric poet and as a melancholy mal, ill at ease in the modern world.