José María Egas

José María Egas (Bahía de Caráquez, 1896 - 1982) was an Ecuadorian poet. Many of his poems were turned into the lyrics of "pasillos".^[1] Egas studied law at the University of Guayaquil graduated in 1927. He was then active as a lawyer and journalist, but became best known for his poetry, being appointed national poet laureate in 1976. He served as a professor at the University of Guayaquil.^[2]

Works

• Poesía: Unción (1923)
• Unción y otros poemas (1941)
• El milagro (1941); Unción
• El milagro y Otros poemas (1954)
• Canto a Guayaquil (1960)
• Poesías completas (Guayaquil, 1982. 2da. Ed)

In anthologies:

• Indice de la poesía ecuatoriana contemporánea (Santiago de Chile, 1937)
• Otros modernistas (Guayaquil, s.f.)
• Poesía viva del Ecuador (Quito, 1990)
• La palabra perdurable (Quito, 1991)
• Poesía modernista ecuatoriana (Quito, 1991).

References

1. Ketty Alexandra Wong, La musica nacional: Changing perceptions of the Ecuadorian national identity in the aftermath of the rural migration of the 1970s and the international migration The University of Texas at Austin. School of Music - 2007 Page 117 " “Invernal” (Winter Time), a poem written in 1920 by poet laureat José María Egas, (1896-1982) and musicalized by safadi, is an example of the type of pasillo that was raised to the level of national symbol."
2. John D. Martz -Politics and Petroleum in Ecuador 1987 Page 90 (re CIA involvement in Ecuadorian politics in the 1970s) "In an April 1984 interview, one of the prominent Ecuadoreans involved at the time, José Maria Egas, explained the reasoning which he and some other Ecuadoreans had found acceptable at the time. By this time, Egas had come to rue these ..."