09 Nov Dear All by Jorge Guitart (1937-2025)

About the Poet

Dr. Jorge Guitart, a longtime Professor of Spanish linguistics in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University at Buffalo, and beloved member of the Buffalo arts and poetry communities, including his work with Just Buffalo Literary Center, died on October 28th in Buffalo. He was 88.

Jorge was born in Havana, Cuba, and came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1962 at the age of 24, earning degrees at George Washington University (B.S.) and Georgetown University (M.S. and Ph.D.). He moved to Buffalo in 1973 to teach at The University at Buffalo. Throughout his career, he also lectured in Spain, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Finland, and Cuba. He was an influential scholar in the field of Spanish linguistics, specializing in phonology and semantics. Much beloved by his students for his charismatic personality and extraordinary teaching, Jorge was passionate about sharing knowledge in a wide array of fields—linguistics, yes, but also history and science.

As a poet he wrote in both in his native Spanish and in English, endeavoring to keep them, in his own words, “schizophrenically apart.” He was the author of Foreigner’s Notebook (Shuffaloff Press, 1993) Film Blanc (Meow Press, 1996), and The Empress of Frozen Custard and Ninety-Nine Other Poems (BlazeVOX, 2009). His work was archived in the University at Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center and at the UB Libraries Poetry Collection in Capen Hall.

Jorge published translations of Cuban poets into English, (e.g., Jose Kozer) and U.S. poets into Spanish (e.g., John Ashbery). In the recent years, he collaborated with artists in other fields, including the late painter Catherine Parker, the Lake Affect musical group, and the photographer Errol Daniels. He was also a painter and songwriter. He participated in the Cuban-American Artists from Western New York exhibit at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in 2005, and had a solo show at Buffalo’s El Museo in 2006. His tango “Si supieras” was recorded by singer Elise Witt and is included in her 2003 CD Love Being Here. In December of 2019, he retired after teaching 46 years in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University at Buffalo.

Noted for the linguistic playfulness of his poems and their frequent wry twists of self-reflexive parody, his late UB colleague English professor Mark Shechner wrote of Guitart’s poems as “models of what happens when you cast off ready-to-hear spoken English and re-imagine the language so that your readers can hear it afresh, as you once did as a boy in Havana listening to big band jazz and baseball games on American radio. English then was a miracle. Thus Jorge writes in [his poem] “Ballpark Figures”: ‘Holy polluted mackerels! the sun is kindling its own temporal fire,’ which is surely the voice of the late Yankee announcer Mel Allen calling the play-by-play of the Big Bang.”

The Cuban-American novelist and fellow poet Pablo Medina called Guitart “a master of language, a tongue trickster, a feller of fashion,” and noted that while “(his poetry) is not for the masses (it) is for everyone.”

Jorge’s survivors include his wife of 55 years, the former Sarah Dickinson; son, Nick Guitart; daughter, Jenny Guitart (Kevin Boyd); grandchildren, Nathaniel and Nicholson Boyd; sister, Vilma Robaina; and many loving nieces, nephews, and siblings-in-law. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, Jorge’s family has requested that mourners “write a poem and cast it into the wind. Or donate to an arts organization.”

The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.