This dissertation investigates the representation of the image of the stone in poems by four modern Latin-American poets. To do this, I selected one key poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. Based on pertinent principles of literary criticism and analysis, I perform close readings of each of these texts. Despite the use of the same image, the semantic results in each poem present significant variation. That is my starting point for discussions of related historical and theoretical issues such as critical reception, value, ("No meio do caminho" by Drummond), the representation of the lyrical speaker, imagery, metapoetry, ("A educação pela pedra" by João Cabral), the role of the history in poetry, the manipulation of literary sources, (Poema XVII by Pablo Neruda), the concept of "logos" and the relationship between poetry and myth ("Como las piedras del Principio" by Octavio Paz). The basic goal of this dissertation is to put into practice critical and theoretical approaches that optimize the reading of poetry. / text