The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Vicente Palés Matos was born in 1903 in Guayama, Puerto Rico and died in 1963 in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. He was a poet, lawyer, judge, and editor. His father, Vicente Palés Anés, and his brothers—Gustavo and Luis Palés Matos—were also poets. Unlike his brothers, he studied law at the University of Puerto Rico and served as a municipal judge in Salinas, near his hometown. He published in the newspapers La Opinion, El Pueblo, and El Imparcial and eventually became the editor of the latter. In 1922, Palés Matos and Tomás López Batista published “Manifiesto Euforista,” followed by the poem “Salutación a los poetas jóvenes,” marking the beginning of the poetry movement euforismo. Three years later, in 1925, he collaborated with Emilio S. Delgado, Vicente Géigel Polanco, and Samuel R. Quiñones, founded the poetry movement noísmo, publishing a manifesto in El Imparcial, which described its focus as the rejection of everything. Palés Matos received poetry awards from El Casino Español de San Juan in 1921 for his poem “Mujer puertorriqueña” and the Ateneo Puertorriqueño in 1922 for his poem “Hoy me he echado a reír.” His works include Vientos y espuma: Cuentos y poemas (Editorial Puerto Rico, 1945) and La fuente de Juan Ponce de León y otros poemas (Editorial Cordillera, 1965).

Works Cited

Géigel Polanco, Vicente. Los ismos en la década de los veinte. Cíclo de conferencia sobre la literatura de Puerto Rico, Instituto de cultura puertorroqueña, 1969, p. 4-18. La Colección Puertorriqueña, Biblioteca y Hemeroteca Puertorriqueña del Recinto de Río Piedras de la Universidad de Puerto Rico y el Center for Latin American Studies at Rutgers University, https://issuu.com/coleccionpuertorriquena/docs/los_ismos_de_los_1920s. 

“La literatura de la vanguardia.” EnciclopediaPR, 26 Aug. 2015, https://enciclopediapr.org/content/la-literatura-de-la-vanguardia/. 

Müller. Vanguardia latinoamericana: historia, crítica y documentos. Tomo II. Caribe. Antillas Mayores y Menores, Editorial Iberoamericana / Vervuert, 2002, pp. 12-3.

“Palés Matos, Vicente.” BiografíasPR, Lexjuris, 1996-2002, www.lexjuris.com/biografias/buscar/search.asp?rec_id=101.