GUILLN, JORGE

born Jan. 18, 1893, Valladolid, Spain died Feb. 6, 1984, Mlaga Spanish lyric poet who experimented with different metres and used verbs rarely but whose work proved more accessible than that of other experimental poets. The son of a newspaper publisher, Guilln studied in Switzerland and at the University of Granada before graduating from the University of Madrid in 1913. He taught Spanish at the University of Paris from 1917 to 1923 and began publishing his poetry. He earned a doctorate at the University of Madrid in 1924 and taught at the University of Murcia, the University of Seville, and the University of Oxford. In 1927 he participated in the tercentenary of Luis de Gngora, became a member of the Generation of 1927, and in 1928 published his collection Cntico (Canticle; Cantico: A Selection of Spanish Poems), which he expanded in subsequent editions in 1936, 1945, and 1950. He was influenced by Paul Valry and Juan Ramn Jimnez, who sought pure poetry, emphasizing the musical properties of language over narrative and didactic motives. Guilln went to the United States during the Spanish Civil War, taught Spanish at Wellesley College (194057), and later lectured at numerous other universities in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Latin America. From 1957 to 1963 Guilln published Clamor, a three-volume collection of poems in which a sad awareness of the evanescence and limitations of life replaces the uncomplicated positivism of Cantico. Guilln on Guilln: The Poetry and the Poet (1979) is a selection of bilingual editions of poems from various stages of Guilln's career, accompanied by comments by the poet.