El poeta del pueblo/ la poesía para el pueblo. En torno al proyecto de El Barrilete (primera época)

Intended by its editors as a publication connected to what was "popular", the El Barrilete collection portrays the search driven by different poetic groups from the end of the 1950s to the beginnings of the 1960s for what they conceive as the urgent task of the Argentine writer: acting in favour of the democratization of culture and society as a whole. This paper delves in the project promoted by the poets around the cited magazine, by focusing on two concise aspects: on the one hand, the self-definition of the lyrical group as "poets of the people" and the modulations acquired by such figuration on the pages of El Barrilete; on the other hand, the controversy held by the publication members with the circle of El pan duro, oriented towards establishing which of these social actors are better positioned to exercise genuine representation of the "people".