Traditions & vernacular · 1866–1930 · Latin America & Caribbean

Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets)

Also known as Pliegos de poesía popular chilena, Chilean popular verse sheets, Pliegos de cordel (Chile)

Loose verse sheets printed and sold in Chile's cities from 1866, peaking around 1890 and declining after 1920, though some were still printed into the 1940s. A band of woodcuts of crimes, executions, disasters, prodigies, wars and saints and a block of stacked headlines in mixed display types (sometimes above the cuts, sometimes below) announce the lead stories like a newspaper, and four to eight signed décima poems by one poet fill narrow ruled columns below, in black ink on cheap paper.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

The sheets show the real executions, murders and disasters of named people, and some verse 'a lo divino' is devotional; do not recycle a scaffold or a mutilated body as period gore for effect. Prodigy and scandal sheets ("El niño con dos cabezas", "La niña vestida de hombre i que se casó con otra niña") made a spectacle of real, often poor or gender-nonconforming people; quote them as history, not as freak-show novelty. The images are mostly anonymous, so do not credit a cut to the poet named on the sheet. Popular poetry in décimas, sung a lo divino and a lo humano, is still practised by Chilean cantores and payadores, so work with them, and credit them, rather than imitating their verse.

How it works

Run a band of crude relief cuts across the head of the sheet for the lead story or two, sometimes captioned in letters cut into the block, sometimes as loose cut-out figures without a frame.
Stack centred headlines in clashing display types, condensed above extended, above or below the cuts, to sell the news at a glance.
Set four to eight poems side by side in narrow columns divided by vertical rules, each under its own short title, often in capitals.
Cut figures as flat black silhouettes and white-line patterns, with checkered floors and bare rooms instead of perspective.
Sign the sheet at the foot with the poet's name, or pseudonym, and address, often with the printer's imprint, because the poet sold it aloud in the street.
Print in black only on cheap paper; let density, not colour, carry the urgency.

Santiago and Chile's other main towns, where poets, many of them countrymen who had moved to the cities, printed their décimas as cheap street sheets

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Column grid defining
Central symmetry characteristic
Framed panels occasional
Space & hierarchy: Layered information defining
Horror vacui defining
Extreme scale contrast characteristic
Repetition & rhythm characteristic
Flat hierarchy occasional
Sequential narrative occasional
Typography: Eclectic mixing defining
Condensed display characteristic
All caps characteristic
Didone characteristic
Slab serif occasional
Ornamented display occasional
Tight setting occasional
Colour: Monochrome defining
Light ground characteristic
Dark ground occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration defining
Distortion & exaggeration occasional
Rectilinear occasional
Surface & texture: Carved line defining
Paper & letterpress bite characteristic
Ornament: Rules & bars characteristic
Restrained accents characteristic
Folk & sacred symbols occasional
Imagery: Line illustration defining
Comic & cartoon occasional
Medium & production: Letterpress defining
Woodblock & linocut defining
Tone & intent: Communal & popular defining
Agitational & persuasive occasional
Spiritual & sacred occasional
Romantic & sensual occasional
Playful & witty occasional
Avoids: Full polychrome, Generous white space, Straight photography, Dynamic asymmetry, Full bleed, Abundant decoration, Non-representational, Gradients

Palette

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Typefaces

Nineteenth-century condensed and extended wood and metal display types, stacked and centred for the headlines
'VIVA EL 18!', 'Gran incendio en Guayaquil'
Modern-face roman for the décimas in narrow columns, with a short title, often in capitals, over each poem
Capitals cut into the woodblock as picture captions
'TRISTE EJECUCION'
Bold display capitals for the poet's signature and address at the foot of the sheet

Known for

La Lira Popular Nº 79, año IV, Santiago de Chile (poet Juan Bautista Peralta; Lenz collection, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile); Peralta's own sheet gave the genre its name
Fusilamiento del reo José Agustín Espinosa / El espantoso crimen de la calle del Porvenir / El brindis de la conductora (poet José Hipólito Casas Cordero; Alamiro de Ávila collection), with the cut captions 'Triste ejecución' and 'Después de la ejecución'
Gran incendio en Guayaquil … Gran combate en Valparaíso entre bandidos i policiales
poet Daniel Meneses; Lenz collection
¡Viva el 18! Dos crímenes horrorosos
poet Pepa Aravena; Lenz collection
La niña vestida de hombre i que se casó con otra niña en Illapel / Guerra entre Chile i la Arjentina
poet José Hipólito Casas Cordero; Alamiro de Ávila collection
Verse sheets signed Rosa Araneda (authorship debated; see Navarrete, Aunque no soy literaria, 1998) and by Bernardino Guajardo, whom Memoria Chilena calls the most important popular poet of the nineteenth century (poet-authors, not cutters of the images)
The Rodolfo Lenz (c. 500 sheets) and Alamiro de Ávila (350 sheets) collections, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, and the Raúl Amunátegui collection, Archivo Central Andrés Bello, Universidad de Chile; inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2013

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