In spite of a shared language, Latin American poetry written in Spanish differs from Spanish poetry in many respects. The Spanish of Latin American poets is more open than that of Spanish poets, more exposed to outside influences—indigenous, English, French, and other languages. While some literary critics maintain that there is as language of Latin American poetry cannot help but reveal the influences of its unique cultural history.
Latin American poetry is critical or irreverent in its attitude toward language, where that of Spanish poets is more accepting. For example, the Spanish-language incarnations of modernism and the avant-garde, two literary movements that used language in innovative and challenging ways, originated with Latin American poets. By contrast, when these movements later take their language for granted, rarely using it in radical or experimental ways.
The most distinctive note in Latin American poetry is its enthusiastic response to the modern world, while Spanish poetry displays a kind of cultural conservatism—the desire to return to an ideal culture of the distant past. Because no Spanish-language culture lies in the equally distant (i.e., pre-Columbian) past of the Americas, but only the fluid interaction of all world cultures, or else the extensive time before cultures began.
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