Teaching Modern Latin American Poetries

Book excerpt: The essays in this book, groundbreaking for its focus on teaching Latin American poetry, reflect the region's geographic and cultural heterogeneity. They address works from Mexico, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Uruguay, as well as from indigenous communities found within these national distinctions, including the Kaqchikel Maya and Zapotec. The volume's essays help instructors teach poetry written from the second half of the twentieth century on, meaningfully connecting this contemporary corpus with older poetic traditions. Contributors address teaching various topics, from the silva and the long poem to Afro-descendant poetry, in ways that bring performance, digital approaches, queer theory, and translation into action. The insights offered here will demonstrate how Latin American poetry can become a part of classes in African diasporic studies, indigenous studies, history, and anthropology.