Prosaicism and infra-realism in Roberto Bolaño's early poetry

Abstract

Emphasizing the hybridity between poetry and novel that characterizes the literary work of Roberto Bolaño, as than the prosaic way that, according to the writer, defines his poetry, this paper questions the manifestations and intentions of this prosaic form in the first poetics works of the author. We shall see how those poems, according to the principles of the infrarrealist manifests, look for express the “fornication of the daily life with tragedy” that the young poet identifies in his time marked by State’s terrorism. This election of prosaic forms and popular genders that thwarts every interpretation of the history’s tragedy according to a vain lyrism or a directly ideological discourse authorizes the young Bolaño to exorcize or mock it.