Guaire (Grupo Guaire) was a literary group founded in 1981 and led by Venezuelan poet Rafael Arráiz Lucca. At the time, most of its members were students at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB) in Caracas, Venezuela. Its membership included:
- Rafael Arráiz Lucca (1959- )
- Alberto Barrera Tyszka (1960- )
- Armando Coll (1960- )
- Javier Lasarte Valcárcel (1955- )
- Leonardo Padrón (1959- )
- Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas (1960- )
- Nelson Rivera Prato (?)
According to Bravo, its main influences were the American poets T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Edgard Lee Master but also the Latin Americans Jorge Luis Borges, José Emilio Pacheco, Cobo Borda, among others (254).
The group’s main theme was the city (Caracas), depicted in a language free of metaphors and with the intent of recovering the immediacy and corporeality of urban life (Bravo 253; Lasarte Valcárcel 279). In a more or less systematic indagation, the collective sought to develop a poetic style more direct and closer to the realities of everyday life as opposed to the “totalizing songs” and “verbal games” that characterized the avant-guard poetry of the 1960s and 1970s (iv; Lecuna 329; Lasarte Valcárcel 277, 279).
References
- Bravo, Víctor. Diccionario general de la literatura venezolana. Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2013. 253-254.
- Lasarte Valcárcel, Javier. “Trayecto de la poesía venezolana de los ochenta: de la noche a la calle y vuelta a la noche.” Literatura veenzolana hoy: historia nacional y presente urbano. Ed. Karl Kahut. Frankfurt/Main: Vervuert, 1999. 277-291.
- Lecuna, Vicente. “Yendo de la cama al living: poesía venezolana (1970-1990).” Revista Iberoamericana 60.166 (1994): 321-336.
- Pacheco, Carlos. Nación y literatura: Itinerarios de la palabra escrita en la cultura venezolana. Caracas: Ed. Equinoccio, 2006.
- Valdivieso, Alejandra. “Guaire: un río con varias desembocaduras.” Thesis UCAB, 2007. AAR 1115.