Ivan Argüelles (born January 24, 1939) is an American poet whose work moves from early

Beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery (c ...

- and

surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the

Poetry Society of America The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the society have included such renowned poets as Witter Bynner, Ro ...

William Carlos Williams Award The William Carlos Williams Award is given out by the Poetry Society of America for a poetry book published by a small press, non-profit, or university press. The award is endowed by the family and friends of Geraldine Clinton Little, a poet an ...

in 1989 as well as the

Before Columbus Foundation The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, "dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature". The Foundation makes annual awards for books published in ...

American Book Award The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "the ...

in 2010. He is the twin brother of the

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...

writer

José Argüelles José Argüelles (; born Joseph Anthony Argüelles; January 24, 1939 – March 23, 2011) was an American New Age author and artist. He was the co-founder, along with Lloydine Argüelles, of the Planet Art Network and the Foundation for the Law of ...

and the father of the linguist Alexander Argüelles.

Life and career

Ivan Argüelles, was born January 24, 1939, in Rochester, Minnesota, having been conceived nine months earlier in Mexico City where his parents, Enrique Argüelles, an artist and citizen of Mexico and Ethel Meyer Argüelles, of Minnesota, then lived. His mother returned with Ivan and his twin brother Jose to Mexico City, where they resided until 1944 when they moved to Mexicali and shortly thereafter to Los Angeles. Ivan was attending Playa Del Rey School in the first grade when his mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The family then uprooted again and went to Minnesota where his mother was placed in a sanitarium. After a stay with his maternal grandparents they got their own house in Rochester. There Ivan finished his elementary and high school education. Ivan's older sister Laurita was responsible for much of his upbringing and care while they lived in Mexico, and during the period their mother was in the sanitarium and convalescing. While his father wanted Ivan and his brother Jose to become painters, Ivan decided to turn to poetry in his high school years. He received a national award for a poem he wrote in the 11th grade. While in college and during the decade of the 60s he continued to write however sporadically, chiefly efforts at experimental prose works on the model of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

and

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

. It was not until about 1970 that he turned seriously to writing poetry. At about the same time he became conscious of the Chicano movement and the work of Cesar Chavez. So it is no accident that much of his earlier poetry is infused both with the surrealistic style he then adopted and with themes relating to his own Mexican background. After graduating from Rochester (Minn.) High School in 1956, Ivan then attended the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, where he received his BA in Classics (1961). Later education includes a year at New York University (1962) and Vanderbilt University (1967–68) where he received an MLS in Library Science. He worked as a professional librarian at the New York Public Library, 1968–78 and at the

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

, 1978–2001. Married since October 27, 1962, to Marilla Calhoun Elder, artist and activist, they have two sons,

Alexander Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

, a noted linguist, and Maximilian. Argüelles's first poetry collection was ''Instamatic Reconditioning'' (1978), followed by ''The Invention of Spain'' (1978). During the late 70s and into the 80s his poems were frequently and widely published through many small press and poetry journals in the United States. In 1984 according to the ''Directory of Small Press Publishers'' he was ranked as the fourth most published poet in the country. This early period of his writing culminated in the book ''Looking for Mary Lou'' which received the 1989 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America (judge,

June Jordan June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English ...

). Beginning in 1990 he ceased writing what he refers to as "the daily poem" and turned to writing the long poem, the epic. He also founded, with

Andrew Joron Andrew Joron (born March 6, 1955) is an American writer of experimental poetry, speculative fiction, and lyrical and critical essays. He began by writing science fiction poetry. Joron's later poetry, combining scientific and philosophical ideas w ...

, Pantograph Press, which in 1992 published the first volume of his epic, the long poem ''"That" Goddess''. While he continued to write during the next 10 years, sometimes collaborating with other poets, his published work continued to be in the vein of the book length poem. This creative direction culminated in the two-volume (867 pp.) poem ''Madonna Septet'', published in 2000. Among works published since then of note is the collaboration with John M. Bennett, ''Chac Prostibulario'', a multilingual experimental work. In 2009 he published a long poem formally based on Dante, titled ''Comedy, Divine, The''. His selected early poems, ''The Death of Stalin'', was published in 2010 (American Book Award Winner, Before Columbus Foundation). The unexpected death of his identical twin,

, on March 22, 2011, prompted the rush of elegiac poems published in 2012, ''A Day in the Sun''. In 2013 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has been writing and getting books published with an almost annual regularity since 2010. Among these titles are: ''FIAT LUX'', 2014; ''Orphic cantos'', 2016; and ''Fragments from a gone world'', 2017.

Poetic style

As a young poet in the late fifties and early sixties, Argüelles felt the influence of the Beats, but also immersed himself in the literature of the Romance languages and High Modernism. Upon graduation from Vanderbilt, Argüelles was hired as a cataloger at the New York Public Library. It was there, in the library's poetry collection, that Argüelles discovered the poets of the New York School. As he later wrote in an autobiographical essay entitled "Asi Es la Vida,"."What was this idiom, this racy colloquial and yet often surreal mélange? I was still swinging with Dante and the troubadors. . . . And then there was the gateway to the French surrealists through Ashbery and O'Hara. . . . My mind was in flames, multiplying in all directions. . . . Between Vallejo and Breton my brain began to sunflower." But the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of

Philip Lamantia Philip Lamantia (October 23, 1927 – March 7, 2005) was an American poet and lecturer. His poems were often visionary, ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic, exploring the subconscious world of dreams and linking it to daily experiences, while s ...

. As Argüelles stated, "Lamantia's mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me."''Contemporary Authors'', pp. 13-14 While Argüelles's early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms, and eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, to often elegiac works exemplary of romantic

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

List of books

*''Instamatic Reconditioning'', 1978 *''The Invention of Spain'', 1978 *''Captive of the Vision of Paradise'', 1982 *''Tattooed Heart of the Drunken Sailor'', 1983 *''Manicomio'', 1984 *''What Are They Doing to My Animal?'', 1984 *''Nailed to the Coffin of Life'', 1986 *''The Structure of Hell'', 1986 *''Pieces of the Bone Text Still There'', 1987 *''Baudelaire's Brain'', 1988 *''Looking for Mary Lou: Illegal Syntax'', 1989 *''"That" Goddess'', 1992 *''Hapax Legomenon'', 1993 *''Tragedy of Momus'' (in the anthology ''Terminal Velocities''), 1993 *''Enigma & Variations'', 1995 *''Purisima Sex Addict II'' (with

Jake Berry Sir James Jacob Gilchrist Berry (born 29 December 1978) is a British Conservative Party politician and former solicitor who served as Chairman of the Conservative Party and Minister without Portfolio from 6 September to 25 October 2022. He pr ...

), 1997 *''Dead/Requiem'' (with Jack Foley), 1998 *''Saint James'' (with Jack Foley), 1998 *''Madonna, a Poem'', 1998 *''Daya Karo'', 1999 *''City of Angels'', 1999 *''Madonna Septet'', 2000 *''Cosmic Karma Raga'' (with Peter Ganick), 2000 *''Chac Prostibulario'' (with John M. Bennett), 2001 *''Tri Loka'', 2001 *''Orientalia'', 2003 *''Inferno'', 2005. *''Comedy, Divine, The'', 2009 *''The Death of Stalin: Selected Early Poems'', 2010 *''Ulterior Vision(s)'', 2011 *''A Day in the Sun'', 2012 *''The Second Book'', 2012 *''Ars Poetica'', 2013 *''FIAT LUX'', 2014 *''Duo Poemata'', 2015 *''Orphic Cantos'', 2016 *''La Interrupcion conversacional'', 2016 *''Fragments from a gone world'', 2017 *''Lagarto de mi corazon'', 2018 *''Cien sonetos'', 2019 *''HOIL'', 2019 *''Twilight cantos'', 2019 *''The Rudiments of Poetry'', 2020 *''The Shape of air, Fragments'', 2020 *''The Last/lost epic'', 2020 *''Testamentum : two alphabets'', 2020 *''Diario di un ottogenario'', 2020 *''Secret poem'', 2021 *''Tamazunchale'', 2021 *''Field Hollers'' (with Solomon Rino), 2021 *''The Blank Page'', 2021 *''Immobility—Poetry'', 2022 *''The Translation to Heaven'', 2022 *''Sintaxis ilegal'', (selection and translation by Arturo Davila), 2022

Blibliographical resources

https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mmartin-rodriguez/index_files/vhArguellesIvan.htm

References

External links

Review of ''Comedy, Divine, The''Poets & Writers Directory listing for Ivan ArgüellesInterview
with Argüelles (April 29, 2020) {{DEFAULTSORT:Arguelles, Ivan 1939 births 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American poets 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American poets American Book Award winners American expatriates in Mexico American male poets American poets of Mexican descent American twins Living people Poets from California University of California, Berkeley people University of Minnesota alumni Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area