Great poet of Latin America | Best poet of modern Argentina | Luis Benítez Poetry

Luis Benítez (born Buenos Aires, November 10, 1956) is a remarkable Argentine poet, essayist, narrator, and playwright whose work resonates deeply across Latin America and beyond. A member of prestigious literary institutions—including the Academia Iberoamericana de Poesía (New York), the World Poetry Society, and the Advisory Board of Poetry Press in India—Benítez has received numerous distinguished awards, such as the International Poetry Prize La Porte des Poètes (Paris, 1991), Argentina’s Biennial Poetry Prize (1992), and literary honors in Uruguay, Italy, Mexico, and his home country

His poetic voice is charged with political urgency and moral witness—he confronts power structures and societal contradictions with stark clarity and unflinching honesty In contrast, his less overtly political pieces brim with biting wit and dark humor, as seen in “Taxidermy,” where he satirizes academic pretensions by describing how one might “take out its innards / as poisonous as the blowfish / fill it with academic hay”

With over three dozen books published across numerous countries and languages, Benítez is recognized as a central voice in contemporary Argentine and Latin American poetry. Collections like A Great War Inhabits Things (2022) and The Entire Life anthology (2023) showcase the breadth and urgency of his poetic intelligence

Luis Benítez

LUIS BENÍTEZ
A voice grew hidden in the words

 
I threw my stone into the unknown
and broke the window in the language
all at once
the tool and the place
the trees the scents my life insurance
will surrender to a single breath.
 
What we are facing is a step backwards.
A voice that grew hidden within words
loses its distance among the bushes.
There’s a knock at the door 
and the old story rises,
a dream where everything starts again
a displacement to find a forgotten shape
for an unexpected guest
and a grain of sand weighs like a blessing,
we find joy like a stranger
who stumbles into us on the street
and without saying ‘’excuse me’’
or dusting off his clothes
starts a conversation
we always walk through the land of the unpredictable
what is possible is a new version of the impossible
and the first time the sun shone
the sky was full of nothing

 
Hidden

 
It was raining
and we were hidden
from now on
I will remain under your shadow
alive through the end of all seasons
when insects become maggots
ready to believe
that every passer by
is someone I know.
I will linger in my room
gloomy site
immersed in your shade
where death is nothing
but a shaky herald.
I will go into that tiny light
no matter how.
 
Diorama
 
The science says
(the only one to trust in today
like when Poseidon
believed in Telemachus)
that India collided with Asia
at the end of its long trip to the shore.
Thus, at eight thousand meters
the Himalayas rose.
Those immense rubbles
stopped the fierce monsoon
on its way to Africa
just like someone who wants to reverse the irreversible.
Half of the continent dried up
like a handkerchief in the sun.
The ruins of the forest that once was wet
saw for the first time
the line between the dusk and the dawn.
Large and tall grasslands in rotten wood
eased the eternal race between the lion and the antelope
in the slight jungle, the monkeys
fought for every branch every female and every fruit
till the defeated descended on two feet to the plain.
What good are a tail and four hands?
Better to raise the head above the bushes
like a child learning to walk
hesitating advancing doubting
striking the stones with stones,
until from one
which will it be?
Which will it be
the house of the god of food?
May honey drips or termites spill
may marrow flow of those white things
left by the cats’ feast;
that’s the treasure of the dead.
Australopithecus afarensis, ancient grandfather
you ran swaying between the dunes
trembling with fear of the dark and the roars
furry and scared of the daily threat
brought by the night and the stars.
No claws no fangs no wings no horns
no swift legs no formidable muscles
no hard shell no certain and defiant size
barely a weak gleam on the forehead
a vague certainty
more distance than presence
of what you couldn’t take in your hands,
neither smell nor bite
but it was there.
In the word ‘’yesterday’’ today is tomorrow.
 
Death is scared of us
 
Death is a legend
wandering on the avenue of its loneliness
like a crazy old woman
shouting;
Death is scared of us!
 
An absence still resounds
in this arrogant time
made of scorched paper,
and debris of its own dreams
 
but
in the invisible night
as usual
the sound of the bells
gathers the living and the death
 
our breath will fade
but we won’t notice
 
as a plane flies by
we easily forget it
attracted only to the ancient wonder
of a child pointing at the sky
 
Taxidermia
 
 
to take a good poem and carefully remove its guts
as poisonous as the pufferfish’s
to load it with academia
to comb its hair according to the latest fashion, even though
it insists on going the other way
place it on a pedestal and in its base
set a bronze plaque with its name in modern Latin
 
and the inert beast will never fuck up again
 
 
The mummy in the showcase
 
The Blue Nile
the golden boats a God made
the pyramids built while the time stood still
the ambitious insomnia of the Pharaoh
the hippos hunting under the new moon
are not even memories in his empty head
in the hole of his eyes
 
the rotten bandages that hold his guts badly
the pieces fall over the paralysed feet
the frozen hands and the consumed legs
 
when she thinks it’s only because a distracted fly
has slipped into her ear
and if she smiles it’s because
the gnawing of the moths
has gifted her a new grimace
 
The language of the gods
 
“What happens in poetry unfolds in the future”
Alejandro Schmidt
 
I want to know if you speak or understand
the language of the gods
of course that gods do not exist
and every metaphor is an interpretation
 
I want to know if when you look at a tree
you see the seed and also the log in the fire
if you feel for a second the spectacular weight
of the centuries
if the planets and the atoms
have the same size in your heart      because that is the key
 
I want to know if words
are more than just words for you.
Life slips away from you with each step
and your hand
always reaching out towards that mask
 
Ours is a syntactic conspiracy
and the one who orders the words
puts the world in its place
 
we are born either in Córdoba, London or Burzaco.
 
That boy in a backyard in Prague
right now straining paper
does not know yet
that he is making the first sticks
for the language of the Gods.
 
Ours is not a single language
frozen and secret
the language of the gods
has infinite dialects regional uses
perfect localisms and all of them
make it mestizo dark impure
so transparent and so clear
 
If you speak the language of the gods
you will speak with the living and the dead
time is a lie space an illusion
and as somebody said
reading poetry is another form of telepathy
 
there are speculators
word traffickers childish beggars
but none of them
speak or understand what they tell them
The language of the gods
disturb them again and again
some babble others distort it
but the language remains outside intact, ignorant
 
the gods don't hear them when they speak
they only hear their silence stirring
we had and have warriors, priests and martyrs.
It’s our tradition:
to know, to desire, to dare and to remain silent
according to the good health of words.
 
That's why
I want to know
if you speak or understand
the language of the gods.

 
Marcelo Dughetti argues with Montale
 
Let the young man pass
(the one who weaves the faces of the past
like a weaver from Rimini
who skilfully uses bobbins)
to eat trout with me on this Roman night.
 
Bring that old one which we only opened
when Joseph Brodsky came to visit
dim the lamps once again
so the horizon can sparkle again
beyond the windows
and the strange light of the oil tanker
shines again.
I am an old poet, all ears
and I don’t know who leaves and who stays
so now I want to hear everything from my son
 
I want to know him and recognize him
even if he has a rough voice and he is vulgar
because he knows of what substance we are made
Where is our past?
What weight a patio holds in its memory?
 
Let the rogue pass, the clumsy young man
the one who talks to himself crossing dirt streets.
We’ll have a long conversation in this empty room,
empty for so long
and if you hear him raise his voice don’t be alarmed
for this is how the young speak.
Once I also complained like this
furious at the passing of years, love and hours.
 
Fury is to know that leaving
is the best way things have to remain
 
let the young man rage, for in rage
he understands even better what the dust holds
what the echo says what the day hides
let him suffer and cry
and also laugh whenever he can.
The laughter of poets is a rare thing
the most precious thing on earth

 
The blinds
 
Every night you tell me
to pay the greatest attention
to make sure the blinds are properly closed.
The pleasant aroma of dinner
has not faded yet
our eyes are still closed 
inside this dream.
But before that
it is necessary
to repeat that daily precaution
not because of the sporadic attack
of the wind and the rain
or because of the next sun.
The blinds must be properly closed
so that nothing stands in our way
like an insect carrying on its legs a foreign poison
something that cuts or obstructs the bridges
we have so carefully built
over all these years together.

On the Foolishness of Fairy Tales
 
The good ones almost never win.
Love is weak
usually, neither late nor early,
justice is done
and time
cannot heal
even the smallest wound
but what would become of us
(understand value and cherish)
without fairy tales?

 
Haute Couture
 
There’s no worse profession
than being a fashion designer
who decrees
that for this season
the length of verses
must reach the knee
or fall to the ankles.
Their sour mannequins then parade
across every available runway
resembling oversized strawberries
a massive salmon
teetering on huge high heels
or absurd pots flipped upside down
ready for the promised applause
of the repetitive
tedious news.
Whether the “how” should be half-naked
or if it’s proper to show the “what ”
their creators assure that if invited
Homer and T.S. Eliot would say ‘’It’s fine’’
and nearly no one would hesitate to agree.
In every matter the edict of fashion
is the worst thing in this world.