The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Francisco Lluch Mora, a poet and historian, was born in 1924 in Yauco, Puerto Rico and died in 2006. His family was of Catalan origin and settled on the archipelago in 1818. In 1943, he began his university studies at the Instituto Politécnico in San Germán, which he eventually had to abandon due to health problems. In 1944, he resumed his studies at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras campus. From 1947 to 1948, he presided over the Ateneo Universitario and was in conversation with poets such as José I. De Diego Padró, Luis Palés Matos, and Francisco Matos Paoli, and classmates such as Félix Franco Oppenheimer, Eugenio Rentas Lucas, and Juan Enrique Colberg. In 1952, he founded the magazine Pegaso, of which he was editor-in-chief, and co-published the magazine Orfeo with other writers from across the country. Alongside Félix Franco Oppenheimer and Eugenio Rentas Lucas, he founded the Movimiento Trascendentalista in Puerto Rican poetry. Lluch Mora worked as a teacher in the towns of Yauco and Guánica, Puerto Rico and was a professor and the director of Hispanic studies at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRUM). He also worked as faculty at other UPR campuses. After retiring, he moved to the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico in Ponce, where he worked as a professor in the Hispanic Studies Department and in the History and Fine Arts Departments. Lluch Mora’s work includes Del asedio y la clausura (Editorial Yaurel, 1950), Cuaderno de sonetos (Colección Pegaso, 1953), Del barro a Dios (Editorial Yaurel, 1954), Canto desesperado a la ceniza (Colección Rodadero, 1955), Momento de la alegría (Ediciones Yaurinquen, 1959), El ruiseñor y el olvido (Ediciones Rumbos, 1960), Cartapacio de amor (Ediciones Rumbos, 1961), La creación (Colección Centauro, 1961), Poemas sin nombre (Editorial Club de Prensa, 1963), Canto de Despedida a Juan Ramón Jiménez (Ediciones Rumbos, 1965), and La voz ausente (Réquiem al hijo muerto), which remains unpublished, among others. His awards include an honorary degree in humanities, granted by the Universidad Mundial in 1970; the title of Hijo Adoptivo y Predilecto de Ponce, granted by the Municipality of Ponce in 1965, and the same title awarded by the Municipality of Guayanilla in 1980; an Honorable Mention in 1956 from the Premio de Poesía Don Antonio Rodríguez Menéndez for Canto desesperado a la ceniza; and first place from the Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña for the books El ruiseñor y el olvido, La personalidad literaria de Francisco Negroni Mattei, and La lumbre y el ocaso.

Works Cited

Acosta, Ramón Zapata. “Presencia de la muerte en la poesía de Francisco Lluch Mora.” Revista Hispánica Moderna, vol. 34, no. 3/4, 1968, pp. 810–15. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30207098.

Báez Fumero, José Juan. “Francisco Lluch Mora, poeta yaucano.” Ceiba, vol. 5, no. 1, August-December, revistas.upr.edu/index.php/ceiba/article/view/5645/4411.

Cautiño Jordán, Eduardo. La personalidad literaria de Francisco Lluch Mora. Ateneo Puertorriqueño-Ediciones Mairena, 1994, pp. 59-71.