La Poesía Sorprendida

La Poesía Sorprendida (Spanish for “Surprised poetry”) was a Dominican literary movement and avant-garde journal that existed from October 1943 to May 1947. Rebelling from the nationalism and realism that prevailed in Dominican poetry at the time, the sorprendistas sought to cultivate a universal poetics that explored the psyche and soul in surrealistic ways. The most well-known sorprendistas whose works were published in the journal include Franklin Mieses Burgos, Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Mariano Lebron Savinon, Manuel Rueda, Freddy Gatón Arce, Antonio Fernandez Spencer, Rafael Americo Henriquez, Manuel Valerio, Manuel Llanes, Juan Manuel Glass Mejia, Chilean Alberto Baeza Flores, and Spaniard Eugenio Fernandez Granell.

Adamantly anti-fascist and surrealistic since its first issue, thirteen years after Rafael Trujillo assumed complete control of the country, the journal was one of the only publications that challenged and rejected the oppressive regime's ideology. Today, many Dominican literary critics and intellectuals consider La Poesía Sorprendida to be not only the most significant movement in the nation's literary canon, but the poetic peak of Dominican literature as of late.