Oliverio Girondo is closely identified with the Latin American avant-garde movement, both as a poet and an intellectual. This movement represented a new spirit and energy, and a break with the Modernists. The poets who pertained to this "vanguardia artística" (artistic vanguard) rebelled against traditional subjects and style, pushing language to its limits. Girondo's poetry has been defined as an adventure in and of language, in which he experiments stylistically with strange rhythms, clever word games, the "feísmo" (ugliness) characteristic of the Hispanic baroque tradition, and the new rhetoric of superrealism. Girondo's interest in poetic innovation lasted throughout his career. It existed from the beginning, as is made clear in the following line taken from the "Carta abierta a 'La Púa'" (Open Letter to "La Púa"), dated Paris, 1922, which serves as an introduction to Veinte poemas para ser leí...