Jaime Sáenz

Jaime Sáenz

Jaime Sáenz Guzmán (October 29, 1921 – August 16, 1986) was a Bolivian poet, novelist, and short story writer. Born in the city of La Paz, he lived virtually his entire life in that city, and its dark atmosphere had a powerful effect on much of his work. His poetry, though individual to the point of being difficult to classify, bears some similarities with surrealist literature.

Throughout his life, Sáenz struggled with alcoholism, a struggle about which he frequently wrote in his poems. Owing to this fact, he is often viewed as a sort of poète maudit, or "cursed poet". Sáenz was openly, "unashamedly", bisexual.