Between the desert and the sky: Raúl Zurita's "Purgatorio" (Purgatory) as an antecedent of documentary poetry in Latin America

Abstract

The Chilean poet Raúl Zurita writes from the pain of living during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). At that time, Zurita was kidnapped and, in his memory, there remains a wound that cannot heal. Although the term documentary poetry does not exist in Latin America, this article addresses the possibility that the poet is a precursor of Latin American documentary poetry. For this, it is based on the importance of the context in which Zurita lived and how he found a way to transform pain through poetry. In this article we will see how in Purgatorio —translated to English as purgatory— (1979), Zurita applies tools typical of documentary poetic creation such as intervened images, polyphony and wordplay. In the United States, documentary poetry has as its referents poets such as Ed Sanders, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams, among others. They also wrote about historical events using documentary poetry tools. Therefore, we consider the importance of a poet like Zurita to demonstrate how violent and historical events in Latin America remain through poetry.