Llorens Torres, Luis (1876–1944)

Luis Llorens Torres (b. 14 May 1876; d. 16 June 1944), Puerto Rican poet. Born into a comfortable family in Juana Díaz, in southern Puerto Rico, Llorens began writing verse at the age of twelve. He studied law in Barcelona and Granada, Spain, where he also wrote articles on Puerto Rican and Caribbean history for several periodicals. Llorens practiced law in Puerto Rico, while at the same time engaging actively in journalistic writing. In 1913 he founded and directed the journal Revista de las Antillas, which established new directions for the poetry of Puerto Rico, and two years later established the satirical weekly Juan Bobo (with Nemesio R. Canales). He published articles under the pseudonym Luis de Puerto Rico and in 1914 wrote a historical drama, El grito de Lares (The cry of Lares, 1927). Llorens defined his philosophy of art as "everything is beauty" and "everything is poetry." Llorens wrote poems of intense patriotic sentiment about Spanish American history and the Caribbean; about Puerto Rico's towns, women, customs, heroes, history, folklore, natives, and landscape, and verse both admiring and protesting the United States. He was also a member of Puerto Rico's House of Representatives from 1908 to 1910, and was a supporter of self-determination for Puerto Rico. When Llorens became gravely ill in New York in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt arranged to have him flown to Puerto Rico, so that he could die in his homeland.

His major works are América (1898), Al pie de la Alhambra (At the foot of the Alhambra, 1899), Sonetos sinfónicos (Symphonic sonnets, 1914), "La canción de las Antillas" y otros poemas ("Song of the Antilles" and other poems, 1929), Voces de la campana mayor (Voices of the great bell, 1935), and Alturas de América (Heights of America, 1940).

See alsoPuerto Rico; Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Daisy Caraballo-Abreu, La prosa de Luis Llorens Torres: Estudio y antología (1986).

Carmen Marrero, Luis Llorens Torres: Vida y obra (1876–1944) (1953).

Theresa Ortiz De Hadjopoulos, Luis Llorens Torres: A Study of His Poetry (1977).

Nilda S. Ortiz García, Vida y obra de Luis Llorens Torres (1977).

Additional Bibliography

Axelrod, Steven Gould, Camille Roman, and Thomas J. Travisano, editors. The New Anthology of American Poetry. Volume Two, Modernisms 1900–1950. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Cabrera de Ibarra, Palmira. Luis Lloréns Torres: Ante el paisajes. San Juan: Editorial Yaurel, 1990.

                                        Estelle Irizarry