In line with the philosophical focus which characterizes Jorge Luis Borges's writing, much of the recent poetry in Argentina is of an «intellectual» and metaphysical nature. In Chile, also, the mental games of Juan Luis Martínez or the «objetivismo» of Gonzalo Millán center on the problems of language. These «thinking» poets tend to avoid direct political references in their texts, and, indeed, for some of them poetry transcends the world of current events. However, given the repressive political situations in Argentina during the military regime and in Chile under Pinochet, one has to wonder what effect these oppressive governments have had on the poetry in both countries. One means of gauging this effect is to look for evidence of overt political themes in that poetry. In the case of the Argentine poets, such political intrusions into their thematics during the military regime were relatively scarce. The Chilean situation contrasts dramatically with that of its neighbor, however, and there is much arresting material to present from that country. Since much of this political poetry does have obvious points to make, and since the intent of this article is to present as many brief texts as possible, there will be no formal analyses of the poems. This is a presentation, and not a study, of politically oriented texts that manage to coexist with what Roberto Juarroz would call «ethical» or deep poetry, which is committed to an examination of philosophical concerns.

Commitment to political poetry, however, seems to have been singularly lacking in Argentina during the years of the Proceso, the military dictatorship of the late seventies and early eighties, and for clear reasons. There was a strong current of socially oriented poetry in the fifteen years before the 1976 coup in Argentina. This line of writing was influenced by, among other events, the Cuban revolution, dissatisfaction with the Onganía dictatorship in Argentina, and the Viet Nam war. The representatives of this colloquial, socially critical poetry, such as Juan Gelman, Alberto Szpunberg, Roberto Santoro and Paco Urondo, were, at the time of the coup, «muertos, "desaparecidos", or exiliados» (Brega essay). In addition to the absence of these important figures, during the military regime censorship by the state was so severe that no books containing political poetry could be published, and there was a total lack of literary magazines which had a socially critical nature (Brega). These conditions explain the scarcity of overt political themes, but the turmoil and repression of those years still had a «direct influence» on the course of poetic production, according to Santiago Kovadloff, but he says it is still too early to judge their effects on the poetry now appearing in print (88). Even allowing for censorship during the military regime and some self-censorship afterwards, the repressive situation did not lead to many direct references to political themes during those years. But there is a clear tendency towards an «allusive» poetry, especially one that expresses a distrust of the communicative power of language, as Andrés Avellaneda points out in a recent article (1-11). Research on language centered poetry from Argentina, however, would indicate that the poetry of the seventies was to a certain extent following the lead of such influential poets as Roberto Juarroz and Alejandra Pizarnik, who were incorporating phenomenological questioning of language into their work in the fifties and sixties (Running). The political situation of the

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seventies was also, however, as Avellaneda makes clear, a «propitious» or Orwellian environment which produced «favorable conditions» for a poetry that mistrusted language.

For poetry, this was the only possible response to the «monopolization of collective discourse» on the part of the military regime. There was, however, a related area which effectively countered the fear and anti-collective mentality fostered by the regime, and that is popular music. From the beginning of the Proceso, rock concerts were allowed, and were the scene of vigorous outpourings of social malaise. Two critics of rock music, Osvaldo Marzullo and Pancho Muñoz put it succinctly: «el gobierno de facto había silenciado muchos sentimientos y la gente ávida de escuchar y los músicos ávidos de cantar verdades» (14). In marked contrast to the poetry of those years, subtlety was not a characteristic of the «canciones contestatarias», as these lyrics from a Charly García song show: «nos quieren desanimar, nos quieren matar». Figures such as García were clearly considered, by their young audiences, to be leaders in the political struggle, as during his concerts they would yell, «¡Charly presidente!» (Vilas, 86, 111). Similar incidents occurred at concerts by various other artists such as León Gieco, Piero (whose live recording of the explicitly titled song, «Que se vayan ellos», is extremely powerful), and Miguel Cantilo. Rock magazines, such as Expreso Imaginario, also had a large readership (circulation in this case of 15,000 copies), and helped to break through the regime's suppression of communication (Vilas, 88-90).

In any case, one Argentine poet who has singularly focused on repression has come to my attention, and that is Jorge Brega. Brega published his first book, No ha lugar (sic), in 1975, just before the coup, in an underground, photocopied edition. This was followed, in 1984, by Poemas de ausencia, with a prologue signed by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. These more recent poems have a fairly wide range. There are stark representations of the absences created during the wave of «desaparecidos», such as this bare bones text:

Or this brief but symbolic description.

This particular text shows the power of poetry to load meaning into a few words as it develops the highly specific enumeration of the contents of the snapshot into -in the last line- a palpable representation of the whole country's suffering, something that the young Chilean political poets do repeatedly. Brega also has a moving prisoner's poem which again, at the end, makes its ironic and resigned connection with the world outside; the irony coming from the repeated use of the imperfect subjunctive which gives the grim reality of prison a hypothetical quality as opposed to the real but futile protest going on out «there».

Finally this brief poem whose title, and images related to flying, ironically underscore the terror of one of the famous ways in which the Argentine military «disappeared» their victims by dropping them, alive, from airplanes into the delta.

These poems were all written during the Proceso, and some of them were published then in a courageous magazine, Nudos, which Brega edited. No ha lugar, published in anticipation of the coup, is more bitter, as can be easily seen in «Prohibido para mayores (también para contralmirantes, etc.)», and especially in «El torturador piensa», where again irony underscores the bitter contrast between the torturer's barbarous job and his mundane home life.

The only other book of poems with a political focus to come out during the military regime was published in Spain by Horacio Salas, a member of the «generación del 60». He was living in exile in Madrid, and framed these texts about his situation, as did Brega, in a moving and ironic vein, as the title «Gajes del oficio» indicates. The poem with that same title best represents the high level of culture that Salas incorporates into all his poetry, along with the incongruously depersonalized explanation of the title juxtaposed with the searing recollection of his own torture, which is presented graphically enough to require no commentary.

The rest of the Argentine poets who include references to the political situation do so only sporadically, and most of these poems were published after the years of the Proceso. Some of these poets, and their poems, are: Marcos Silber, like Horacio Salas a member of the sixties generation («Tanto a proa como a popa...» and «Dadas como están» from Cono de sombra y casa de pan); Héctor Yánover («Argentina -agosto de 1973» and «Tiempos oscuros» from Sigo andando); Alicia Dellepiane Rawson («Un código secreto», «Duele esperar con amor» and «No hay trato» from Memoria del amor, and also «Contra la desesperanza» in Siete poetas contra la desesperanza, a group publication); Pablo Narral («La guerra ha terminado pero» in La furia y los sonidos); Enrique Puccia («Oficio de tinieblas» in Tópicos); Jorge Boccanera («Los desaparecidos» and «Un hombre» in Marimba); Diana Bellesi («Detrás de los fragmentos») and María Victoria Suárez («Ceremonias», cited by Kirkpatrick

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7-8).

A singularly interesting case is that of Alfredo Veiravé. One of the most highly regarded mature poets in Argentina, Veiravé published no poems with a political bent until his son was drafted during the Malvinas crisis, illustrating this recent statement by an unnamed official from the Argentine government, quoted in a New Yorker article.

Veiravé's personal concern comes out clearly in «El cuadro dentro del cuadro», a poem that is typical of his texts in its construction: its interweaving of cultural references, in this case the visual worlds of Velázquez's painting and the Bogart film, with contemporary events. Again, as in Salas and Brega, note the humor, coming through the unexpected juxtaposition of circumstances in the last parenthetical statement.

This same intertextuality operates in another poem from Veiravé's most recent book, Radar en la tormenta. Citing lyrics by one of Argentina's most outspoken young popular singers underlines both Veiravé's interest in popular culture and his rebellion against the war.

Juxtaposing Rubén Darío, the avatar of Latin American poetry, with the specific circumstances of the Malvinas battle, makes this text a showcase of the conflict between political events and poetry for art's sake. The image in the last sentence -a giant shadow-wound in the poet's chest- reflects both the real injuries suffered by the young Argentine soldiers and the poet's sorrow in having to confront the event.

In Chile, many of the poems with political resonances reveal, in marked contrast to the Argentine individualism, a definite and pervasive sense of nationality and communal concern. This does not mean that there are no poems which describe very personal circumstances, as will be shown, but it does mean that the repressive political atmosphere of the last thirteen years is reflected in the work of almost all of the recent poets. This national consciousness, to be sure, is the result of shared experiences, and not, as Luis Bocaz (40) correctly points out, an intention to create a «national art». There is, of course, a Chilean poetic tradition that also influences the directions these more recent political poets take. Among the most obvious predecessors would be Gabriela Mistral, whose love for their country is so clearly seen in Poema de Chile; Pablo Neruda, especially the bitter reactions to war in the Tercera residencia; the irony and black humor of Nicanor Parra's Antipoemas. Also, as in Argentina, popular music has been a major medium of anti-government expression. At first circulated clandestinely after the coup, and later sold openly, «música contestataria» has had an avid audience in Chile. Some of the major artists are Víctor Jara, who was killed at the time of the coup, Patricio Mans, Rolando Alarcón, Isabel and Ángel Parra, and the groups Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani.

Despite their common experience and tradition there is a wide range of perspective, method and tone in the newer political poets. Some of the references to the political and social situation are somewhat oblique, suggested or allusive rather than blatant, as in

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Jaime Quezada's recent book, Huerfanías. «Cultiva la idea de que el mundo se apaga» is the suggestive title of one of these poems. It begins with the line, «Todos los animales han fenecido en este valle», later repeats the words of the title, and ends with these two lines:

This bleak landscape clearly stands for the national situation, as does another similar poem, about a hunter, which ends with these lines:

Just as did Veiravé, Quezada often juxtaposes symbolic elements, as in this brief poem which brings together the sublime organ music of Handel and the horrific sound of a fighter plane.

Beyond its political perspective, however, Huerfanías is essentially a personal metaphysics with many religious references.

Many other current Chilean poets also incorporate various types of political references into their poetry, maintaining their particular perspectives and concerns. Certain recent poems stand out as being particularly biting: «Terrorismo de estado», «Lo que somos» and «Atisbo de torturado» in Caudal de murientes by Guillermo Trejo; «Después de la fiesta» and the bitter «Sin señal de vida» in Cartas para reinas de otras primaveras by Jorge Teiller; «Un árbol es el centro de la tierra» and «Revelación de la nieve» in Que, tras esos muros by Rolando Cárdenas; «Canto de un pájaro nocturno» in Versos para quien conmigo va by Hernán Miranda; «Los viajes» in Palabras en desuso by Jorge Torres Ulloa; «Fe de ratas» in Perro de circo by Juan Cameron.

Also strong are poems by several women writers. Rosa Betty Muñoz Serrón's book, Canto de una oveja del rebaño is an ironic criticism of the Chilean situation, as can be seen in these lines from «Canto a los pastores» which clearly imply repression and cruelty.

Powerful poems, such as «Los desaparecidos» and «Balada del desterrado» are also prominent in Marjorie Agosin's Brujas y algo más. Perhaps the most gripping text is this brief testimonial in Huellas de siglo by Carmen Berenguer -the cover of which has a photograph of armed police standing over a dead or beaten man, lying on a rainwashed street, a picture which may well have given rise to this poem.

In contrast to this use of a specific case to imply the general malaise, Raúl Zurita, an enfant terrible and cause célèbre, and thus probably the best known of the younger generation of poets in Chile, centers his texts on the concept of Chile itself, and within this context addresses the current situation, virtually writing it away in these lines from Anteparaíso.

Finally, there is a good deal of overt and committed politically pointed and denunciatory poetry in Chile, much of it from the mid 1970s, when it was circulated in «papeles sueltos» (Cociña 10) and later published in Chile after the freedom of press act by the Pinochet government in 1983. Gonzalo Millán is, along with Juan Luis Martínez, probably the most intellectual of the generation born in the 1940s. His phenomenological concerns center around a poetry of «naming» things, a procedure he calls objetivismo. The poems in La ciudad, published in Canada where Millán was living in exile, exemplify this approach. Many of the lines of the fairly long texts consist only of a definite article, a noun and a verb, and there is a good deal of repetition and word

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play. The second half of the book, in particular, very definitely addresses the political situation, while still rigorously adhering to the «objectivist» technique. Although there are rhetorical figures in these lines, from poem number 57, they contain no subtlety or suggestion.

The more recently published Seudónimos de la muerte contains shorter and less repetitious texts. Beginning as a diary of torture he suffered in Chile, the book becomes a series of vignettes of Millán's life in exile. The first poem is set at the scene of many tortures and deaths in Santiago.

The repeated use of acrobatic terms, generally associated with the happy atmosphere of circuses and clowns, give an unusually bitter twist to this poem. In «Aparecida», repetition of the title's positive term again makes the grotesque ending all the more repugnant.

And in «Mientras», the relentless anaphora of the title word gives the sense of the victim's apparently never-ending degradation and pain, as well as the fact that it is separated from the text's isolated and insensitive destinataire, addressed in the last six lines.

This poem, with its exhaustive and painful litany of objects and actions which detail the practices of torture, might be called «objetivismo en función». It is at once a model of that poetic technique and a stomach-churning testimonial to the Pinochet regime's inhuman practices. Unfortunately, however, as Millán admitted in an interview, «no hay poema capaz de derribar una dictadura».

Even in his Canadian exile the poet cannot escape that cruelty, as it intrudes into his daily life there even through the mail, which here becomes a metaphor for death.

José María Memet, from the next younger generation, has what could be seen as almost a pair of companion pieces to Millán's «Mientras»; following up as they do on themes of torture and of distantiation from that suffering. But Memet is a more metaphysical poet, using images in the place of Millán's relentless repetition and accumulation of details, as in this poem.

In the first lines, the use of synecdoche («el labio se le rompe, la llaga que abre») and of metonymy («En una mesa el dolor seco. La sed...») make the pain sufficiently specific, while still universalizing the experience -it transcends the suffering of one person and stands for what all such victims go through. In the next lines the rain has a symbolic function, drawing the narrator or reader back outside the torture chamber, and washing away the experience. But then the focus changes to the narrator whose windows may be watched, and then to the reader, as the words on the page become «precarious» and suspect. The text formally changes to include «us» at this point as we become the potential victims. In the final question «we» must decide our own destiny, with the fear to be defeated implying both our own timidity and, pointing back to «el golpe tan cobarde», the malignant power now in control. The second poem from Memet's book, Los gestos de otra vida, reemphasizes the need for the reader (the destinataire-tú) not to close out («mientras tú duermes») the ones who suffer, and in so doing responds to the criticism at the end of Millán's poem.

But this poem goes much farther than Millán's «Mientras». Sleep serves here as a metaphor for a future, active, reality («lo importante es darse cuenta...»), which allows for an optimistic and doubly metaphorical «awakening».

Finally, we come to three books written while their authors were in prison. The first two of these have titles which indicate that situation, Cartas de prisionero by Floridor Pérez and Dawson by Aristóteles España. Particularly due to their circumstances they are moving documents, as this poem by Pérez indicates, with its metaphoric presentation of the poem as an explosive and the reader as the potential detonator and reconstructor.

Much of Pérez's book consists of interchanges with the author's wife, with the tone alternating from sadness to nostalgic sweetness to pain. From that intimate and sometimes metaphorical record of prison life, we go to pure «género testimonio», España's Dawson. The book itself is a testimonial document, containing, in addition to its poems, photographs of prisoners in the prison camp at Dawson

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Island and photocopies of España's censored letters and official prison forms. What makes this all the more painful is the fact that the author was seventeen years old during that year in prison, following the 1973 military coup; it seems almost unbelievable that such a young person could deal with this stark and terrorizing environment, much less convert it into an artistic testimonial. Fourteen years after this experience, the poet still has a youthful face with round, innocent looking eyes.

The book begins with the prisoners' arrival at Dawson Island.

This is certainly a vivid and detailed testimonial of the prisoners' arrival, but it is also very definitely a poem, with its several images: we see the poet's romantic transferring of his own emotions to the season, as he sees spring close its doors and at the end of the poem refers back to his own life whose «windows» (its future) are becoming closed. The cross image (or possibly a gun) formed by the placement of the words on the page toward the end of the poem reinforces the sense of suffering and termination. Typically, this Chilean poet places even as personal an event as this is into its national context. After several personal references, to «mi cabeza» and «mi abrigo», comes the question of Chile's future, and the inclusive question -¿veremos el sol mañana?- which could either have the group of prisoners or the country's entire population as its subject.

Ideally, many of España's poems would be included here; they are all a composite of grisly sufferings and poetic insight. Two brief texts will have to suffice, though. «Íntimo», is just one of the poems in the book that detail the various kinds of torture suffered on Dawson Island.

Again, the specifics of the suffering are made clear: the blood, pain, terribly slow passing of time, and the filth. But what makes this such a moving text is the transferring of these experiences into poetic images: pain seen as a whip, performing a torture both mental and physical, seconds experienced as Eras and Ages which create sweet memories (although the capital letters from Eras and Edades also underline the slowness of the time's passing). The final six lines, however, simply list immediate surroundings as if coming back into focus after the prior hallucinatory images, and the poem finishes by focusing on «this» paper that the reader is now looking at -thereby drawing the reader into the text and making her participate, vicariously, in the experience.

The most evocative of all of these poems is the shortest, and it needs no commentary.

While the three previous poets have had prison terms for being «enemies of the state», the final writer to be included in this presentation is currently in the middle of a fifteen year term as a political prisoner. Pablo Varas is a «young history and geography professor» who was jailed in 1982. He was scheduled to be released in 1997, as one of his more touching poems reveals; the release date later was fixed at 1990. The title of this fairly extensive book of poems written while in prison, ¿Dónde estabas tú cuando se manchó el asfalto?, is a poem of commitment in itself. The following representative text from the book is very much in the «objectivist» line of Gonzalo Millán, from the title on, with its methodical listing of mundane actions and objects. This insistently personal and realist technique, with its rhythmic litany, reflects back to the title, «Seven minutes», and we can almost hear the clock slowly ticking as we read.

Since the hour is not given-implying that it doesn't matter, given the circumstances -these seven minutes themselves are seen to stand for any one of the boring and repetitive chunks of time that compose the prison term. Note also the final lines where, as with so many of the Chilean poets, the text shifts from the relentlessly personal and mundane to a communal, national consciousness, whose strength and commitment is all the more poignantly expressed in the understated, matter-of-fact tone. Two brief poems -from a series of ten «Apuntes»- also present both personal and communal facets. The first graphically represents the pain of freedom denied, through use of the most banal remembrance.

The other short text shows that, even in prison the individual's -and by extension the nation's- will has not been broken. It also underscores the power of the poet's word which can create a new morning, a future in which tyranny will be extinguished.

This final exploded word reflects how all of this politically conscious poetry both represents and reaffirms popular attitudes, as well as providing a powerful stimulus to further dissent.

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Avellaneda, Andrés. «Decir, desdecir: poesía argentina del setenta»: Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 9.1 (1983): 1-13.

Berenguer, Carmen. Huellas de siglo. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Manieristas, 1986.

Bocaz, Luis. «Reflexiones acerca de la poesía chilena contemporánea: notas para una lectura ideológica». LAR 4-5 (1984): 34-42.

Boccanera, Jorge. Marimba. Buenos Aires: Editorial

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Nueva América, 1986.

Brega, Jorge. No ha lugar. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Hormigón, no date.

___. Poemas de ausencia. Buenos Aires: Nudos, 1984.

___. Unpublished essay on political poetry in Argentina.

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Marzullo, Osvaldo and Pancho Muñoz. El rock en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1986.

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Millán, Gonzalo. La ciudad. Québec: Les Editions Maison Culturelle Québec-Amérique Latine, 1979.

___. Seudónimos de la muerte. Santiago: Ediciones Maneristas, 1984.

___. Interview in Poesía Diaria, No. 6, May, 1985. Temuco, Chile.

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___, and six others. Siete poetas contra la desesperanza. Buenos Aires, Colección contragolpe (No. 2), 1984.

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___. «The Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik». Chasqui 14.2-3 (Feb. 1985): 45-55.

Salas, Horacio. Gajes del oficio. Madrid: Ediciones taranto, 1979.

Silber, Marcos. Cono de sombra y casa de pan. Ediciones setiembre literario, 1985.

Teiller, Jorge. Cartas para reinas de otras primaveras. Santiago: Ediciones Manieristas, 1985.

Trejo, Guillermo. Caudal de murientes. Santiago: Ediciones Manieristas, 1986.

Varas, Pablo. ¿Dónde estabas tú cuando se manchó el asfalto? Santiago: Arteimpreso, 1986.

Veiravé, Alfredo. Radar en la tormenta. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1985.

Vila, Pablo. «Rock nacional, crónica de la resistencia juvenil». Los nuevos movimientos sociales (Vol. I). Ed. Elizabeth Jelin. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1985. 83-148.

Villegas, Juan. Antología de la nueva poesía femenina chilena. Santiago: Editorial la noria, 1985.

Yánover, Héctor. Sigo andando. Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero, 1982.

Zurita, Raúl. Anteparaíso. Santiago: Editores asociados, 1982.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 73, Number 1, March 1990