Biography of Julia de Burgos | Puerto Rican poetess.

(Julia Constancia Burgos García;) Carolina, Puerto Rico, 1914 - New York, 1953) Puerto Rican poetess. Julia de Burgos graduated normalista teacher at the University of Puerto Rico in 1933.

In 1934 worked PRERA (Agency for the economic rehabilitation of Puerto Rico, for its acronym in English) in Comerio, as an employee of a milk station, place in which children from poor families received free breakfast. He married Rubén Rodríguez Beauchamp that same year.

Julia de Burgos

At the end of the PRERA, for a short time he worked as teacher in a district of Naranjito in 1935. At that time he wrote his famous poem Río Grande de Loíza. During that year, Julia de Burgos also met and befriended Luis Llorens Torres, Luis Palés Matos and Evaristo Ribera Chevremont, among other Puerto Rican poets.

During 1936 he published his poem is our time on a single sheet. It was beginning to be known in literary circles. In October of that year gave the speech the woman before the pain of the homeland, in the first general Assembly of the United Front Pro Convention constituent, in the Ateneo Puertorriqueño. He writes short dramas spark wants to be a butterfly, seascape, the partying on Saturday and jíbaro to be sung verses.

In 1937 match two significant events in the life of Julia de Burgos: the breakdown of his marriage to Rubén Rodríguez Beauchamp and editing private accurate to my own poems, which represents its first lyrical forms, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The following year he met physician and sociologist Juan Isidro Jimenes Grullón, who would become his most hardened love.

In addition, published in 1938, his poem in twenty rowswork. In 1939 he published his song of the simple truth, work awarded by the Institute of Puerto Rican literature. A year later he travelled to Cuba, where he met many intellectuals, among them Juan Marinello, Juan Bosch, Raúl Roa and Manuel Luna. From that moment on he lived alternately in Havana and New York, dedicated to journalism and the literary creation.

On 18 January 1940 it became the city of New York. Fifteen days after his arrival he granted an interview with the newspaper La Prensa, which was published under the title "Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rican poet, cultural mission in United States". Friday, April 5, 1940 the Association of journalists and writers Puerto Ricans paid public tribute to Julia and Antonio Coll and Vidal, in the Wadleigh High School Auditorium in New York. In 1941 he went to live in Havana. In this metropolis University enrolled in courses of Greek, latin, French, biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, educational, mental hygiene...

The relationship with Juan Isidro came to its end in 1942. After that loving disappointment, he decided to depart for the city of the skyscrapers, where they wandered in search of employment. For some time worked as an Inspector of optics, used of a chemical laboratory, selling lamps, office worker and seamstress.

The sea and you and other poems (1954) and myself was my route (1986) were published posthumously. Under the title of Puerto Rican cultural Institute poetry collected his poetry in 1961. A sample of his poems is contained in the Puerto Rican cosmic poetry anthology, published by Manuel de la Puebla in 2002 and the great collections of Spanish-American poetry.

Julia de Burgos died in New York City, on July 6, 1953. Even his death was surrounded by mystery. It was found unconscious and without identification among the 106 Street and Fifth Avenue and died to be moved to Harlem Hospital. In the absence of identification, his body was buried in an anonymous grave. It was later moved to Puerto Rico and buried in the cemetery of Carolina, the nearest possible place to the Rio Grande de Loiza which both impassioned it.

The work of Julia de Burgos is characterized by its singular force, which arises from their passionate romanticism that leads her to develop a mystical and metaphysical nature and love. The depth and quality of his poetic production, his extraordinary ability to reflect the problems of women of her time, as well as the exceptional circumstances surrounding his life and his death (wrapped in a halo of pain, alienation and rootlessness which it had regarded as an "exiled from itself"), have made her one of the most fascinating figures not only of the Puerto Rican letters from the first half of the 20th century , but of all contemporary American literature.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas