10 Examples of Avant-garde Poems

The avant-garde poems are those poems that were produced in certain literary trends from the early twentieth century and characterized by being experimental, since the avant-gardes sought to make compositions that broke with the precepts of traditional poetry.

Before the avant-garde, generally, the poems they followed certain composition rules that affected the themes, the stanzas, the verses, the meter and the rhyme.

The avant-gardes, which emerged in Europe and spread in America, created or used different resources to modify those rules. For example, Apollinaire invented calligrams, poems that were composed of words that formed a picture.

Characteristics of avant-garde poems

Types of avant-garde poems

There are different types of avant-garde poems, depending on the current or the school in which they are enrolled:

Examples of avant-garde poems

1. Fragment of "Car Song", by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italian Futurism)

Vehement God of a race of steel,
space drunk car,
that piafas of anguish, with the bridle in the strident teeth!

O formidable forge-eyed Japanese monster,
nourished by flames and mineral oils,
hungry for horizons and sidereal prey
your heart expands in its diabolical taf-taf
and your sturdy tires swell for the dances
Let them dance on the white roads of the world.
I finally let go of your metal ties.,., You throw yourself
intoxicated the liberating Infinite!
To the roar of howling your voice ...
behold, the setting sun is imitating
your fast walk, accelerating your heartbeat
bloody flush with the horizon ...
Watch him gallop at the bottom of the woods! ...
What does it matter, beautiful Devil!
At your mercy I find myself... Take me
On the earth deafened despite all its echoes,
under the sky that blinds despite its golden stars,
I walk exasperating my fever and my desire,
with the dagger of the cold in full face.

1. "Ce", by Louis Aragon (surrealism)

Everything will start in the CE,
the bridge that I crossed.

Speak a lost romance
of the good wounded knight;
of a rose on the road
and a loose tunic;
of a mysterious castle
and the swans in the moat,
and a meadow in which he dances
the hopeless bride.

Like an icy night
the lay of dueling glories.

They go with my thoughts
by the Loire the armaments;
and the convoys overturned
and badly rinsed tears.

Oh France, my beloved!
Oh my sweet forlorn!
how alone I left you
crossing the CE bridge.

1. “The night is coming ”by Else Lasker-Schüler (expressionism)

The night comes and I immerse myself in the stars,
so as not to forget in the soul the way home
Well, my poor country mourned a long time ago.

Rest our kindred hearts of love,
paired in a shell:
White almonds.

I know that you have, as before, my hand
enchanted in the eternity of the distance ...
Ah, my soul cracked when your mouth confessed it to me.

1. "Camino", by Vicente Huidobro (creationism)

An empty cigar

Along the path
I have stripped my fingers

And never look back

My hair
And the smoke from this pipe

That light led me
All the birds without wings
On my shoulders they sang

But my weary heart
He died in the last nest

It rains on the road
And I'm looking for the place
where my tears have fallen

1. "Introduction to Don Quixote", by Tristan Tzara (Dadaism)

Agile and fast horse trot has been my life
I have known how to travel all over the world
Only one girl has been my love
And I've slept very late in the morning

The old horse has dissipated to pieces
that will be eaten by worms and mice
My love: here is the wisdom that is not in the books
Stay quiet by the table and keep sewing

I will tell you what is waiting for you from then on
Keep sewing my thoughts on a silk dress
until your eyes hurt - and you will be a girlfriend
until my thinking will be free.

1. “Prismas ”, by Jorge Luis Borges (ultraism)

The guitars wake up shaking
my soul dark bird before his sky

The lamp in the urn has already died
more still
the silence of the hands cries out
like an open wound

Armored at night
we are opening the streets like branches

In the blind cisterns
their hands had been filled with suicide
The shears collect the sadness
scattered from the evenings the new moon
it's a little voice up there in the sky

1. “The traveler in the vertex ”, by Germán List Arzubide (stridentism)

your goodbyes

only rule

in the eclipse of the panoramas
we will sink into the banks
from perspective

and no one
will browse tomorrow
our name

is on the road
our only destiny
AND BEHIND
drowns in violence
the loose itinerary
of love

the city

counterfeit

by the dawn of his handkerchief
spilled into the mechanical night

of the tunnel

I unfolded the diary of my indifference
and I read the catastrophe
from
your name

1. “Semáforo ”, by Alberto Hidalgo (simplistic)

It is better that the eyes like tremulous lamps go out
Let the sounds be transparent to where they are never heard
Do not accept the flight of words
That there are no cases when I poeme

I ask for the cessation of the good customs of the language
The demise of grammar
The annihilation of the domestic sense in song
I demand absences when I poetry

I advocate the cult of errata
The celestial lightning of the mistake
The magic game of misunderstandings between verses and readers
So that together we can poem in perseverance of this prodigy

The poem repopulates time
Increase the space of perspectives and surroundings
And while it is spaced out poem
Who poem is forever tense

1. "Revolution", by Gonzalo Arango (nothingness)

A hand
plus one hand
they are not two hands
They are united hands
Join your hand
to our hands
so that the world
do not be in few hands
but in all hands

1. "Where?", By Oliverio Girondo

Did I get lost in the fever?
Behind the smiles?
Between the pins?
In doubt?
In prayer?
In the middle of the rust?
Looking out for anguish,
to deception,
green? ...
I was not next to crying,
next to the ruthless,
above disgust,
attached to the absence,
mixed with ash,
to horror,
to delirium.
I was not with my shadow
I was not with my gestures
beyond the rules,
beyond the mystery,
deep in the dream,
of the echo,
forgetfulness.
She was not there.
I'm sure!
She was not there.

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