Jorge Guillén (born January 18, 1893,Valladolid, Spain—died February 6, 1984, Málaga) was a 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, Guillén studied in Switzerland and at the University ofGranada before graduating from theUniversity of Madrid in 1913. He taught Spanish at theUniversity of Paris from 1917 to 1923 and began publishing hispoetry. He earned a doctorate at the University of Madrid in 1924 and taught at the University of Murcia, theUniversity of Sevilla (Seville), and theUniversity of Oxford. In 1927 he participated in the tercentenary ofLuis de Góngora, became a member of theGeneration of 1927, and in 1928 published his collectionCántico (“Canticle”;Cantico: A Selection of Spanish Poems), which he expanded in subsequent editions in 1936, 1945, and 1950. He was influenced byPaul Valéry andJuan Ramón Jiménez, who sought “pure poetry,” emphasizing the musical properties of language over narrative anddidactic motives.

Guillén went to theUnited States during theSpanish Civil War, taught Spanish atWellesley College (1940–57), and later lectured at numerous other universities in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Latin America. From 1957 to 1963 he publishedClamor, a three-volume collection of poems in which a sad awareness of the evanescence and limitations of life replaces the uncomplicated positivism ofCantico.Guillén on Guillén: The Poetry and the Poet (1979) is a selection of bilingual editions of poems from various stages of Guillén’s career, accompanied by comments by the poet.

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