The Mestizo as Crucible

Contemporary culture consists of many crossing threads. Mestizo poets, as ethnic and cultural cross-breeds, find themselves at the points of intersection. This inquiry deals with contemporary poets of partly Andean or African roots. In their poems, the underlying indigenous oral discourse, which shapes their perceptions, forms a palimpsest with a more recently «inscribed» Western sensibility. The method of this study in Comparative Poetics is linguistics - its focus philosophy. Its aim is to give Western readers of mestizo poems an insight into the interplay between classical Western thought and the one informing indigenous world views and poetic creativity.