Juan Gelman is generally considered by critics to be one of the most important poets of modern Argentina. Born in Buenos Aires in 1930 from Russian-Jewish parents, he published his first collection of poems (Violín y otras cuestiones) in 1956. He is a member of the generación del 60, made up of intellectuals influenced in their critical realism by the charisma of Raúl González Tuñón, forerunner of Argentina's social and political poetry. This group was politically very active, as demonstrated

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... their experimental language and iconoclastic lyricism. Gelman's later life was marked by his exile in the wake of the 1976 dictatorship, and by the desaparición of his son Marcelo Ariel, his daughter-in-law Claudia and his grand-daughter Andrea (born in prison). Since then, it was impossible for Juan Gelman to separate his personal plight from Argentina's historical-political situation, and his poetry became more and more intimate and lyrical, marked by human drama. La junta luz, the author's only theatre play, was written and published in this second phase.