Ricardo Miró Denis (November 5, 1883 in

Panama City Panama City, also known as Panama, is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has a total population of 1,086,990, with over 2,100,000 in its metropolitan area. The city is located at the Pacific Ocean, Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, i ...

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

– March 2, 1940) was a Panamanian writer and is considered Panama's national poet. He traveled to

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at the age of fifteen to study painting, but was forced to return to Panama in 1899 due to the

Thousand Days' War The Thousand Days' War () was a civil war fought in Colombia from 17 October 1899 to 21 November 1902, at first between the Colombian Liberal Party, Liberal Party and the government led by the National Party (Colombia), National Party, and lat ...

. His first verses were published by the magazine ''Isthmus Herald'', where he worked for 10 years. Miró traveled to Spain between 1908 and 1911, where he had the position of consul in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

. In 1909, his poem "Patria" (Native Land) was published. His work was characterized as being nostalgic and filled with the author's thoughts about living away from his own native land. In 1917, he returned to Panama to serve as director of the National Archives until 1927 and as a secretary for the Academia Panameña de la Lengua until 1940. He died on March 2, 1940, in Panama City.

Youth

Ricardo Miró Denis was born on 5 November 1883 in

, then a part of the

United States of Colombia The United States of Colombia () was the name adopted in 1863 by the for the Granadine Confederation, after years of civil war. Colombia became a federal state itself composed of nine "sovereign states.” It comprised the present-day nat ...

. He was the son of Ricardo Miró Tuñón and his wife, Mercedes Denis. His paternal grandfather was Gregorio Miró Arosemena, a former governor of Panama between 1873 and 1875.

Legacy

A posthumous annual literary prize was named in his honour, the Ricardo Miró National Literary Contest of the Republic of Panama. The prize was to encourage writers of poetry and fiction in Panama and in 1952 was extended to include works for theater. In celebration of 100 years since his birth, Miró's completed works were published in two volumes by the National Institute of Culture of Panama.

Personal life

Miró's daughter, Carmen A. Miró, became a noted demographer. In Season 11 of ''

Finding Your Roots ''Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'' is an American documentary television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012, on PBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is com ...

'', a DNA test revealed that musician and actor Rubén Blades is Miró's grandson. Miró is also the grandfather of Rubén Blades' brother, Grammy Award-winning salsa musician Roberto Blades.

Selected bibliography

Novels and collections

* ''Preludes'' (1908) * ''Second Preludes'' (1916) * ''The Pacific legend'' (1919) * ''Maria Flower'' (1922) * ''Patriotic verses and scholastic recitals'' (1925) * ''Silent Ways'' (1929) * ''Poetry'' (collection published 1983) * ''Novels and Stories'' (collection published 1983)

Poems

* ''"The Last Seagull"'' (1905) * ''"Native Land"'' (1909) * ''"To Portobello"'' (1918) * ''"Patria"'' (''"Homeland"'') * ''The reincarnation poem'' (1929)

Notes

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Miro, Ricardo 1883 births 1940 deaths Panamanian male writers Male poets 20th-century Panamanian poets 20th-century male writers