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Gilberto Owen

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Gilberto Owen Estrada
BornMay 13, 1904
Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico
DiedMarch 9, 1952 (aged 47)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Resting placeHoly Cross Cemetery, Yeadon, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Genrepoems
SpouseCecilia Salazar Roldán
Children2[1]

Gilberto Owen Estrada (May 13, 1904 – March 9, 1952[2]) was a Mexican poet and diplomat.

Biography

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Officially registered as Gilberto Estrada, son of Margarita Estrada from Michoacán, Gilberto Owen was born in Rosario, Sinaloa (May 13, 1904). He spent some of his early years (1919–1923) in Toluca, where he studied at the Instituto Científico y Literario. In 1923, he left Toluca and went to Mexico City, after he got contact to General Álvaro Obregón, who engaged him in the Secretaría de la Presidencia, where he served from August 1923 to June 1928. He matriculated in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. At this time he met the actress Clementina Otero,[3] and people like Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Salvador Novo, Xavier Villaurrutia, Jorge Cuesta, Carlos Pellicer, Jaime Torres Bodet, José Gorostiza, Enrique González Rojo and others, when he joined the group Los Contemporáneos, where he also wrote for the magazine "Ulises" in 1926.[4] He is presumed to be the romantic one and the least civilized of the group.[1]

He spent some years in Bogota where he worked as a journalist and newspaper translator. A compilation of his work in Bogota, Colombia, has been published. Editors Celene García Ávila and Antonio Cajero rescued from El Tiempo (1933–1935) articles and chronicles that display a variety of styles and deal with topics such as politics, extraordinary facts and lifestyle in Latin America. This book was published by Miguel Angel Porrua and Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) in 2009.

In July 1928[3] he became diplomat of the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, and so he lived and wrote the longest time of his life abroad, first in the United States, later in Peru, Ecuador,[5] and at the end of 1932 in Colombia, where he married Cecilia Salazar Roldán on December 2, 1935,[3] daughter of the Colombian General and governor of Panama Víctor Manuel Salazar.[1][6] In Bogotá he published sporadically in the newspaper "El Tiempo".[1] After his marriage failed, he returned to Mexico in 1942, where he wrote for the magazine "El hijo pródigo". In the end of the 1940s he had serious health problems,[3] when he was transferred to the Consulate of Mexico in Philadelphia, where he finally served as vice-consul.[5]

Owen died in Philadelphia from cirrhosis due to alcoholism. His family could not arrange for his body to be returned to Mexico and he was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania in an unmarked grave.[7]

A literature prize is awarded in his name. Owen is also a central character in the novel Faces in the Crowd (2011) by Valeria Luiselli.

Works

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[8]

  • La llama fría (short-novel), 1925
  • Desvelo, 1925
  • Novela como nube (prose), 1928
  • Línea, 1930
  • Libro de Ruth, 1944
  • Perseo vencido, 1948
  • Simbad el varado, 1948
  • Poesía y prosa, 1953
  • Primeros versos, 1957
  • El infierno perdido, 1978
  • Obras, 1979

Further reading

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  • Tomás Segovia: Cuatro ensayos sobre Gilberto Owen (Spanish), 2001 ISBN 968-16-6191-5
  • Guillermo Sheridan: Tres ensayos sobre Gilberto Owen (Spanish), 2008 ISBN 978-970-32-3997-9
  • Francisco Javier Beltrán Cabrera, Cynthia Araceli Ramírez Peñaloza: Gilberto Owen Estrada: cien años de poesía (Spanish), 2005 ISBN 968-835-887-8
  • Francisco Javier Beltrán Cabrera, Cynthia Araceli Ramírez Peñaloza: Lope de Vega, Góngora y Gilberto Owen Archived 2015-05-09 at the Wayback Machine (Spanish), 2006.
  • Francisco Javier Beltrán Cabrera, Cynthia Araceli Ramírez Peñaloza: Notas para una nueva edición de la obra de Gilberto Owen (Spanish), 2006.
  • Francisco Javier Beltrán Cabrera, Cynthia Araceli Ramírez Peñaloza: La revista Esfuerzo: inicios periodísticos de Gilberto Owen (Spanish), 2007.
  • Francisco Javier Beltrán Cabrera, Cynthia Araceli Ramírez Peñaloza: La poesía pura y la vida (o el ejercicio oweniano de poesía pura) (Spanish), 2011.
  • Cynthia Araceli Ramírez Peñaloza: Gilberto Owen, escritor y editor enfocado en las mujeres (Spanish), 2015.
  • Celene García Ávila y Antonio Cajero Vázquez (2009), Gilberto Owen en El tiempo de Bogotá, prosas recuperadas (1933-1935)

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Luis Mario Schneider: Gilberto Owen- El infierno perdido (Spanish), Material de Lectura 36, UNAM.
  2. ^ Tomás Segovia: Perseo vencido y otros poemas, Huerga Y Fierro Editores, 2006, p. 9.
  3. ^ a b c d Gilberto Owen (Spanish) at sinaloa.gob.mex.
  4. ^ Gilberto Owen un poeta de breve y gran significación (Spanish), March 9, 2009.
  5. ^ a b Gilberto Owen (Spanish), MSN Encarta. Archived 2009-10-31.
  6. ^ Colombian States and Panama
  7. ^ Cartagena, Rosa (March 21, 2023). "How did a famous Mexican poet end up buried and forgotten in the Philadelphia suburbs?". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
  8. ^ "Gilberto Owen (1905-1952) - bibliografia poética". Archived from the original on 2010-10-07. Retrieved 2009-06-03.
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