«Yo soy poeta / señores: / y usted debe saber que los poetas / vivimos a la vuelta de este mundo.'

>Mario Benedetti ha sido uno de los escritores más fecundos y populares de América Latina. Un hombre de aspecto frágil y sencillo, de gesto y voz mesurada, que acercó a la gente su palabra despojada de solemnidad. Escribió, a contramano de las modas imperantes y de la crítica, historias que son las peripecias del hombre medio. Visitó todos los géneros literarios: la novela, el relato, el teatro, pero fue la poesía su género predilecto, el que marcó más intensamente su vocación y el más abundante y popular de toda su obra. Probablemente Benedetti sea el poeta más leído en nuestro idioma y, con toda seguridad, el más cantado.' -Joan Manuel Serrat

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

SERRAT READS TO BENEDETTI

A personal anthology to mark the centenary of the Uruguayan author, the most-loved, contemporary poet in Spanish by many generations.

'I am a poet / gentlemen: / and you should know that poets / live around the world.'

'It is not easy to choose the most representative among Benedetti's extensive work, but I trust that this anthology represents all the Benedettis that Mario carried in his backpack - the routine office worker, the middle-class Montevideo man, the committed journalist, the curious traveler, the lover of the homeland, the exiled and the repatriated, as well as the partial intellectual, the political fighter and, of course, the meticulous and hard-working poet who never ceased to be -, in the hope that this selection may prove as useful to the reader familiar with the Uruguayan poet's literary world as to the one who's reading his verses for the first time.

Mario Benedetti has been one of the most fruitful and popular writers in Latin America. A man with a fragile and simple appearance, with a measured gesture and voice, who brought his word to the people, stripped of solemnity. He wrote, against the prevailing fashions and criticism, stories that are the adventures of the average man. He visited all literary genres: the novel, the short story, the play, but poetry was his favorite genre, the one that most intensely marked his vocation and the most abundant and popular of all his work. Benedetti is probably the most widely read poet in our language and, certainly, the most sung. " -Joan Manuel Serrat "