‘Enteras de agua, las ciudades’: A new urban poetics in Zurita

Abstract

In 2007 Raúl Zurita published Las ciudades de agua. In the chapter that gives name to this book of poems, Zurita surprised his public with a change of scenery. Thus, from Chilean nature, essential in his previous poetry, the author moves to urban landscapes, which are poeticized in a completely original manner. With his particular gaze, eternally permeated by nature, Zurita builds these cities "of water" which I shall analyse in this article. The author included these poems in his last book, Zurita (2011), as well as other poems about urban spaces. In all of them, Raúl Zurita shapes a new urban poetics for the 21st Century.