The book Exposición de la actual poesía argentina (1927) [Presentation of Argentinean Poetry Today] collects the works of 46 poets (Jorge Luis Borges, Oliverio Girando, Norah Lange, and Ricardo E. Molinari, among many others), gathered together by those who organized this volume—Pedro Juan Vignale and César Tiempo (Israel Zeitlin’s pseudonym)—as well as representatives of “miscellaneous nuclei and ancillary groups of the new literary generation”; which they consider already started in 1922, according to the prologue titled “Justificación.” However, the book also presents, in a manner of brief introductions and under the title “Situación del lector” [Positioning the Reader], six works of multiple authorship: “Estética” [Aesthetics] by Leopoldo Lugones; “Paralelo” [Parallel] by Rafael De Diego; “1907–1922” by Julio Noé; “Poesía” [Poetry] by Ricardo Güiraldes; “Qué entiendo por poesía lírica” [What Do I understand by lyric poetry] by Tomás Allende Iragorri; “La extrema izquierda” [The Far Left] by Roberto Mariani; and “Rol de ‘Martín Fierro’ en la renovación poética actual” [‘Martín Fierro’s Role in the Present-Day Poetical Renovation] by Evar Méndez. This core group seeks to explain and compare different points of view on contemporary poetry through statements of important references in the intellectual milieu of those times. Ricardo Güiraldes (1886–1927) belonged to the generation of writers such as Evar Méndez and Oliverio Girondo. He was director, along with Jorge Luis Borges, Alfredo Brandán Caraffa, and Pablo Rojas Paz of Proa, second period (1924–26). His major work was Don Segundo Sombra, published in 1926. The young writers voiced his opinion by including his text, “Poesía” at the Exposición de la actual poesía Argentina [Presentation of Present-day Argentinian Poetry], because they saw in him—and particularly in his book El cencerro de cristal [The Crystal Cowbell] (1915), the precedents of the poetic renovation they sought to produce in the 1920s.
