Poetic anthologies and their role in the construction of a local poetry (Tucumán, Argentina)

Abstract

This article proposes a history of the process of construction of the poetry of Tucumán (Argentina), focused on a scarcely studied corpus of poetic anthologies and compilations published in the province between 1916 and 1967. The purposes of anthologists and compilators, the criteria adopted in gathering and selecting poems, the way in which those poems are ordered and disposed in each volume, the relationships between the different books, are some of the aspects which guide the analysis. Certain gestures can be observed in that process, like, among others, the ambition of elaborating a foundational and official discourse about Tucumán in the years of the Centennial of the National Independence, or the gesture of designing the chronology of local poetry and selecting (folowing strict criteria) representative poems of the moments and periods proposed by an anthology from the 1960s.