Skip to main content
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Contributor

Oscar Hahn

Contributor

Oscar Hahn

Since the 1977 publication of Arte de Morir, his first full-length collection of poems, Oscar Hahn (b. 1938, Chile) has been recognized as a major poet. In a lengthy essay the important Chilean postmodernist Enrique Lihn hailed Hahn as "the premiere poet of his generation," and responding to that same volume, the critic Graciela Palau de Nemes called Hahn "the most important poet of the fantastic in Spanish-American letters." His second major collection, Mal de Amor (1981), was taken off library shelves and removed from bookstores by the military junta in Chile a month after its publication, but reissued in an expanded edition five years later. In recent years Hahn has had editions of his collected poems published in Chile, Venezuela, Spain, Argentina, Greece, and other countries. He is currently a Professor of Spanish at the University of Iowa.

Articles by Oscar Hahn

Secretary of State
By Oscar Hahn
You washed your conscienceand hung it up on a linewhere the clean clothes dryBut drops of dirty water felland formed a pooland then a muddy riverthat flowed out to seaThrough that sea battleships saildestroyers…
Translated from Spanish by James Hoggard
Fantasy in Black and White
By Oscar Hahn
Fantasy in Black and WhiteI’m lying on my sickbeda smoking cigarette between my fingersI drink a glass of whiskey and sodawhile I listen to a Duke Ellington CDHis heart has died a supernatural deathand…
Translated from Spanish by James Hoggard
August Song
By Oscar Hahn
many fireflies / could have shone in your eyes
Translated from Spanish by James Hoggard