Punctum-Punk-Punctum: On the Poetry of Martín Gambarotta

The 2011 republication of Martín Gambarotta’s 1996 poetry collection, Punctum, offers the opportunity for new readers to approach this seminal and striking volume, one that was for some time unavailable. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to reflect on the complex poetics of a collection that, despite its initial impression of a stark hermeticism or even banality, offers a range of literary, poetic, and political implications. Moreover, it is a collection that, alongside Sergio Raimondi’s Poesía civil, represents the surprising variety of so-called 1990s, or objetivista, poetry in Argentina, and whose unexpected literary complexity runs counter to easy periodizations of Argentine literature. There is, though, a mismatch between the effectiveness of Gambarotta’s poems and the apparent banality of much of the text. Despite reusing clichés and slogans from the contemporary media, Gambarotta’s collection creates striking thematic, sonic, and visual effects on the reader.