Girri, Alberto (1919–1991)

Alberto Girri (b. 1919; d. 1991), Argentine poet. Born in Buenos Aires, Girri may best be described as one of the last of the prominent male modernist poetic voices of the turbulent mid-twentieth century in Argentina. Girri wrote against the backdrop of some of the most violent and unstable times in his country's history, and his poetry evinces the firm conviction that a humanistic cultural tradition is the best refuge from and bulwark against the insecurities of life. Girri's modernist aesthetic put him outside the sphere of committed literature that was central at the time, and his poetry is marked by an emphasis on the solitude of the poetic voice and by extensive elaborations on the hermetic surrealism of the period, often with an impressive sense of the terror of existential anguish. Girri also published many translations of English-language poets.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jorge A. Paita, "La poesía de Alberto Girri: Rigor de un intelecto exasperado," in Sur, no. 285 (1963): 92-99.

Santiago Kovadloff, "Alberto Girri: La poesía es el corazón de la literatura," in Crisis no. 40 (1976): 40-44.

Saúl Yurkievich, "Alberto Girri: Fases de su creciente," Hispamérica 10, no. 29 (1981): 99-105.

Alicia Borinsky, "Interlocución y aporia: Notas a propósito de Alberto Girri y Juan Gelman," in Revista Iberoamericana 49, no. 125 (1983): 879-887.

Additional Bibliography

Villanueva, Alberto. Alberto Girri en el presente poético. College Park, MD: Hispamérica, 2003.

Villanueva-Ghelfa, Celestino Alberto. "Alberto Girri, o de la poesía como razón hermenéutica." Ph.D. diss, Florida International University, 1999.

                                  David William Foster