Biography

Dante Alighieri maintained that poets should hold a higher place in society than all others and his Divine Comedy reflects that view. Although many poets, (Including Benedetti) have not always been treated kindly by their homeland their influence remains impressive. The apostle Paul used a word in his epistle to the Ephesians that is ussually clumsily translated into English: 'For we are His workmanship...' or πoíημα. The word in Greek is a cognate and transliterates 'poiema' or poem. The idea conveyed is of a poet, not quite satisfied with their work and in the process of editing it to make it better. TC

Mario Benedetti was born in Uruguay and is not well known in the English-speaking world, but he is considered one of Latin America’s most important living writers. He lived in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba and Spain from 1973 to 1985, during a military dictatorship in Uruguay. Nowadays he divides his time between Montevideo and Madrid.
Benedetti has always been politically-oriented and, in January 2006, he joined other renowned figures such as Gabriel García Márquez, Ernesto Sábato, Thiago de Mello, Eduardo Galeano, Carlos Monsiváis, Pablo Armando Fernández, Jorge Enrique Adoum, Pablo Milanés, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Mayra Montero and Ana Lydia Vega, to demand sovereignty for Puerto Rico and join the Latin American and Caribbean Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico, which approved a resolution favoring the island-nation’s right to assert its independence.

If you want to read some more about Mario Benedetti’s life and work, check out the following website.

Palabras Verdaderas
His profile on the Cervantes Virtual Library
(http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/mbenedetti/)
Some of his short stories, in Spanish

Nos vemos prontito!

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Mario Benedetti, Uruguayan writer