Carlos Pezoa Veliz

Carlos Pezoa Véliz
“Today his loved ones shall carry his body to the cemetery. Tomorrow no one will remember him.”
Born	July 21, 1879 Santiago, Chile
Died	April 21, 1908 (Aged 29) Santiago, Chile
Occupation	Poet, Journalist
Nationality	Chilean
Literary movement	Modernismo, Postmodern literature

Carlos Pezoa Véliz (July 21, 1879 – April 21, 1908) was a poet, educator and journalist from Chile. His literary work remained largely unpublished until his death at the age of 28. He was posthumously recognized as a major figure in the history of Chilean poetry.

Pezoa Véliz was born in Santiago, Chile on July 21, 1879 and was the illegitimate son of a Spanish immigrant named Moyano and a young seamstress Elvira Jaña. Early in his infancy he was adopted by José María Pezoa and Emerecia Véliz, an elderly couple who had no children of their own.

His poetry was written within the post-modernist Latin American movement, which broke with the Symbolist and Parnassian schools of Rubén Darío’s modernism. The poetry of Pezoa Véliz constituted a conscious use of language as a basis for a new vision of the world and in particular a novel way of observing the cultural and psychological roots of all things Chilean. Pezoa Véliz could be considered a founding poet and fundamental figure in the history of Chilean poetry – which has given the world of literature figures like Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Gonzalo Rojas and Nicanor Parra.

During his lifetime his body of work was published in journals and periodical publications which were compiled in 1911 - four years after the poet’s death - by Ernesto Montenegro under the title of Alma Chilena (The Chilean Soul) – the name of one of Pezoa Véliz’s most renowned and cited poem. Subsequently, in 1927, Armando Donoso published a new book including new poems, short stories and journalistic articles under the title Campanas de Oro (The Golden Chimes), which were later on broadened by Nicomedes Guzman in his Antología de Carlos Pezoa Véliz (Anthology of Carlos Pezoa Véliz) (1957; 2 ed 1966).