Gallego Otero, Laura (1924–)

Laura Gallego Otero (b. 9 February 1924), Puerto Rican poet, essayist, and educator. Closely identified with her native Bayamón, a suburb of San Juan, Laura Gallego taught high-school Spanish and was an education professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Her published books of poetry are Presencia (Presence, 1952), Celajes (Clouds, 1959), and Que voy de vuelo (Flying Away, 1980). A 1972 anthology of her work includes the prose poems of Almejas de tu nombre (Clams of Your Name, 1954) and the previously unpublished collections of verse En carne viva (In the flesh), La red (The Net), and La del alba seria (The Woman of Serious Dawn). Gallego often speaks of words and silence in her verses, and in poetic dialogue addresses nature, God, an unnamed presence, and love lost. In Celajes Gallego writes about the natural beauty of Puerto Rico and of its people. Wounding images of arrows, darts, daggers, knives, and spines yield in her later poetry to meditative contemplations of the world, mankind, life, God, and the past. In 2002 Gallego was named Humanist of the Year by the Puerto Rican Endowment for the Humanities.

See alsoPuerto Rico .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Laura Gallego, Obra poética, edited by Luis de Arrigoita (1972), pp. 5-15.

Josefina Rivera De Alvarez, Literatura puertorriqueña: Su proceso en el tiempo (1983), pp. 577-578.

Additional Bibliography

Martínez Planell, Sahyly. Los temas en la poesía de Laura Gallego. M.A. thesis, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998.

Pagán Tirado, Lydia. Mambiche: La historia de Vieques en poemas. Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Fundación "Palabras y más," 2006.

                                   Estelle Irizarry