Voicing a Transnational Latina Poetics: The Dedication Poems of Amelia Denis and Carlota Gutierrez

Abstract:This article explores the transnational and gendered aspects of nineteenth-century poem dedications authored by women in Spanish-language newspapers. These intimate exchanges routinely contaminated the public sphere with very personal missives, resulting in the development of a genre that was both socially performative and literary. The article considers a previously unstudied exchange between the Central American poet Amelia Denis and the Mexican-American poet Carlota S. Gutierrez as a flashpoint for thinking through these issues. In September of 1875, Denis dedicated a poem “A la Señorita Carlota S. Gutierrez” in the San Salvador newspaper La America Central. Gutierrez published her response in May of 1876 in La Crónica of Los Angeles, with the title: “A la Inspirada Poetisa Columbiana Amelia Denis.” Their poems express intense admiration for one another via the articulation of a collaborative and gendered ars poetica. They also emphasize Latinx identity as playing a part in creativity, Denis referring to Gutierrez’s poetry as “flower of Mexican soil.” While the industrialized production and circulation of paper media puts women across continents in contact, my study contends that it is the unique form of the poem dedication that makes this precarious and gendered performance of panlatinidad possible in the nineteenth century.