César Vallejo, precursor of antipoetry

Abstract

At first glance, the seriousness and tragic tone of most of Vallejiana's work is radically different from the irony and the black and sarcastic humor of Parri's antipoetry. Moreover, the avant-garde experiments of Trilce are almost incomprehensible to the great mass of readers. In fact, this is precisely the type of poetry that Parra rejects in his Manifesto. However, literary criticism has pointed out some links between the poetry of César Vallejo and that of Nicanor Parra. This article aims to examine these affinities and coincidences, what unites antipoetry to Vallejo and what separates it from him. Vallejo's poetic work shares the terrain with Parra's and paves the way to antipoetry. In that sense, Vallejo is a precursor that we recognize when we reread it in the light of Parra's antipoetry.