I lived from 1875-1934.
I was from Peru, and am in the Americas category.
José Santos Chocano was a Peruvian poet who was born in 1875. He was considered the founder of the modernismo movement in Peru. He was a prolific poet who also wrote lyric and epic poems. in the early 1900’s Chocano’s fame stretched across the continent and even to Madrid and Paris, but he is now neglected because of the bombastic tone of his poems. He had a difficult personality and led a life of violence, arrogance and adventure which was depicted in his poetry. Chocano proclaimed himself "The Singer Of America, Autochthonous and Savage".
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After a short term in jail for political activism, he relocated to Madrid in the early 1900s, where he associated with prominent Spanish and Latin American intellectuals. He was forced to flee Spain due to allegations of financial malfeasance, Chocano spent the next decade and a half traveling through Latin and Central America, where he befriended an astonishing variety of political figures from different points on the ideological spectrum and was closely linked both to brutal dictatorships and idealist revolutionaries. After the coup which desposed Estrada Cabrera in 1920, Chocano was briefly imprisoned, and subsequently returned to Peru. After Chocano had been slapped by a journalist named Edwin Elmore with whom he had argued, he pulled out a gun and killed him. He was released after two years in jail and moved to Santiago de Chile, where he lived in poverty. José Chocano was stabbed to death in a streetcar in 1934. Various reports claimed the assassin was either a madman, a rival in a love affair, or just a stranger.
My poetry
Este era un Inca triste de soñadora frente,
ojos siempre dormidos y sonrisa de hiel,
59 lines
Yo apenas quiero ser humilde araña
que en torno tuyo su hilazón tejiera
48 lines
Hace ya diez años
que recorro el mundo.
43 lines
El Ixtacíhuatl traza la figura yacente
de una mujer dormida bajo el sol.
61 lines
Ya todos los caciques probaron el madero.
«¿Quién falta», y la respuesta fue un arrogante: «¡Yo!»
17 lines
Indio que asomas a la puerta
de esa tu rústica mansión,
46 lines
Esta es la historia de tres princesas,
que parece una fábula de esas
121 lines
Felicidad: yo te he encontrado
más de una vez en mi camino;
46 lines
Enorme tronco que arrastró la ola,
yace el caimán varado en la ribera;
40 lines
Anforas de cristal, airosas galas
de enigmáticas formas sorprendentes,
39 lines
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