The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Jorge Luis Morales was born in 1930 in Ciales, Puerto Rico and died in 1997. He was a poet, writer, professor, editor, and translator. Morales obtained a BA from the University of Puerto Rico and a PhD in classics and romantic philology from the Universidad Central de Madrid. For 35 years, he worked as a professor of Hispanic literature at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). He worked as an editor and translator for the UPR’s Agricultural Experiment Station and the US Air Force Alabama Air Force Quarterly Review. Morales was the founder and president of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Letras and of the Colegio de Alta Cultura, where he taught poetry, essay, and narrative criticism classes. Morales was the first and only distinguished poet in UPR’s residency. He was also selected as Puerto Rico’s National Poet and was nominated for Puerto Rico’s Literature Nobel Award. Morales was a member of the Academia de Artes y Ciencias de Puerto Rico and the Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua,as well as a correspondent for the Real Academia Española. In 1960, he received the Premio de Literatura Puertorriqueña for his collection, La ventana y yo. In 1968, he participated in the Olimpíadas Culturales de Poesía XIX and won the gold medal, followed by an honorary invitation the consecutive year to the first World Congress of Poets, in Manila, Philippines. During his participation in the olympics, he was also named a consultant for Poetry in Translation, a northamerican magazine. He authored over 300 books, which include Búho entre ruinas (Asol, 1976), Mirada en el olvido (El Eco de Yauco, 1953), La ventana y yo (Ediciones la Torre, 1960), España en Alfonso Reyes (Editorial Universitaria, 1976), Discurso a los pájaros (Colección Moriviví, 1965), Los ríos redimidos (Editorial Universitaria, 1969), Obelisco, Ouranus, Orbe (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Letras, 1993), and Elegías (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Letras, 1994), among many others. 

Works Cited

“Colaboradores”. Revista del instituto de cultura puertorriqueña, vol. 11, no. 43, 1969, pp. 7. La Colección Puertorriqueña, Universidad de Puerto Rico, https://issuu.com/coleccionpuertorriquena/docs/primera_serie_n__mero_43. 

International Leaders in Achievement. International Biographical Centre, 1997, pp. 250. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0948875178/page/250/mode/2up?q=Jorge+Luis+Morales.