Julia de Burgos, the
best known female poet in
Puerto Rico and one of the best of Latin America, was born on February 17th, 1917 in
Carolina, Puerto Rico.
De Burgos graduated from the University of Puerto Rico as a teacher. She also studied in Havana, Cuba and later moved to New York. At age nineteen her first poems were published. Her best-known poem is "Río Grande de Loíza". De Burgos published several books including; Poemas Exactos de mí Misma (Exact Poems of/from Myself), Poemas en Veinte Zurcos (Poems in Twenty strips of earth) and Canción de la Verdad Sencilla (Song of the Simple Truth). She received several honors and homages before and after her death.
De Burgos died on July 6, 1953 in New York. She was an alcoholic, and died of cirrhosis. Her body remained unidentified for months after she was found in a gutter without any form of identification on herself.
Most of her poems deal with universal themes such as nature, love, love of her homeland, but she also wrote about a very personal issue on occasion: she was sterile and never could have children, and it traumatized her greatly.