Throughout this eventful period in his life Roa Bastos continued to write and he was considered a poet of the Paraguayan "avant garde". In 1942 he published a book of poems in the classic Spanish style, which he titled "El Ruiseñor De La Aurora" ("The Dawn Nightingale"), a work he later renounced. He also had plays successfully performed during the 1940s, though they were never published. Of his prolific poetry of the late 1940s only "El naranjal ardiente" (1960; "The Burning Orange Grove") was published.