Rueda, Manuel (1921–1999)

Manuel Rueda (b. 27 August 1921; d. 1999), Dominican musician, playwright, folklorist, and poet. Born in Montecristi, Rueda has received his country's National Book Award four times, and in 1994 he won the Fundación Corripio's National Prize in Literature for a life's work, the highest literary distinction in the Dominican Republic. Associated in the 1940s and 1950s with the Poesía Sorprendida movement, Rueda also spent 14 years studying music in Chile, where he began publishing his work and befriended Vicente Huidobro, Chilean poet and theorist. From his first book, Las noches (1949), Rueda has demonstrated a commitment to enhancing the possibilities of his craft through formal explorations. In February 1974, he presented a lecture, "Claves para una poesía plural," whereby he launched an aesthetic creed called pluralismo, which sought to liberate the poetic text by turning it into an interactive, open artifact for both the poet and the reader. His text Con el tambor de las islas (1975) exemplifies the aesthetics of pluralismo, which, despite the uproar it provoked initially, did not produce notable followers. His mature poetic work appears in Por los mares de la dama: Poesía 1970–1975 (1976), Las edades del viento: Poesía inédita 1947–1979 (1979), and Congregación del cuerpo único: Poesía 1980–1989 (1989). Rueda has also received numerous honors for his musical accomplishments, including the directorship of his country's National Conservatory of Music. On six different occasions he won the Premio Anual de Literatura for his poetry, theater and fiction. In addition, in 1994 he earned the Premio Nacional de Literatura.

See alsoHuidobro Fernández, Vicente; Literature: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Alcántara Almánzar, Estudios de poesía dominicana (1979).

Guillermo Piña Contreras, Doce en la literatura dominicana (1982).

José Alcantara Almánzar, Los escritores dominicanos y la cultura (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Veloz Maggiolo, Marcio. Santo Domingo en la novela dominicana. Santo Domingo: Comisión Permanente de la Feria del Libro, 2002.

                               Silvio Torres-Saillant