Jaime Sabines: The Role of the Everyday and the Mortuary in Diario semanario y poemas en prosa (1961)

The poetry of Mexican author Jaime Sabines (1926–1999) is situated within a period of change in Latin America (Cuban revolution, dictatorships, and stylistic changes in literature) that linked the author to colloquialism. According to Cesare Del Mastro, this is a form marked by the use of plain and popular language rather than academicism. Using this style as a platform, two central topics presented in the collection of poems Diario Semanario y poemas en prosa (1961) are addressed in this paper: the everyday and the mortuary. Both are shown as symptomatic expressions of an affront to modernity, with signs of oppression, and the tense relationships and poetic responses are analyzed as a response to deep historical transformations.