Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Incertitude Of Language And Life In The Poetry Of Olvido García Valdés, Sharon Keefe Ugalde
The Incertitude Of Language And Life In The Poetry Of Olvido García Valdés, Sharon Keefe Ugalde
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Two of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s formulations serve as guideposts for the analysis of the poetry of García Valdés: the concept of language-game and the Creation Mystic Experience, or seeing the world as a miracle. The paper first considers the language-game in terms of “unbound” or exempt language. The poet, recognizing the metamorphic nature of language, frees it from predetermined cultural content and, most notably, from grammatical rigidity, toying with ambiguity and fluidity through such techniques as juxtaposition, pronoun vagueness and ellipsis. The second part of the study considers the poet’s exploration of the ineffable, which embraces both the astonishment of being …
“No Es Mi Madre La Tierra” ‘The Earth Is Not My Mother’: Ecology In Gloria Fuertes’S Last Poetry, Douglas K. Benson
“No Es Mi Madre La Tierra” ‘The Earth Is Not My Mother’: Ecology In Gloria Fuertes’S Last Poetry, Douglas K. Benson
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Since the 1930s, Gloria Fuertes’s poetry has attracted listeners and readers to her unique combination of verbal play, witty juxtapositions of erudite and popular sources, and uncanny linguistic virtuosity. Thirteen years after her death in 1998, her popularity continues to grow as new printings of her best-selling books and new editions of her early poetry appear in print. The last book over which she had editorial control, Mujer de verso en pecho (1995) ‘Woman with Verse on her Chest,’ is her most provocative, expanding considerably the thematic range to which she applied her unconventional poetic strategies. One previous thematic element …
Syntactically Silent Subjects: Luis Muñoz And The Poetry Of Ellipsis, Judith Nantell
Syntactically Silent Subjects: Luis Muñoz And The Poetry Of Ellipsis, Judith Nantell
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Luis Muñoz (1966) is one of contemporary Spain’s most salient poets. His work has been described as demonstrating a discourse of ellipsis; yet no study has examined in detail his masterful use of syntactic and figurative omission. In fact, even though Muñoz’s published collections to date span two centuries, no single study has been devoted to his decidedly innovative expressivity. His work has been commented on in various panoramic essays considering contemporary poetry published in Spain at this temporal intersection and a number of his poems have been gathered into noteworthy anthologies of this same era. His poetry has been …
Migration And The Foreign In Contemporary Spanish Poetry: El Sueño De Dakhla (Poemas De Umar Abass) By Manuel Moya, Debra Faszer-Mcmahon
Migration And The Foreign In Contemporary Spanish Poetry: El Sueño De Dakhla (Poemas De Umar Abass) By Manuel Moya, Debra Faszer-Mcmahon
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Many critical studies have addressed the issue of immigration in contemporary Spanish narrative and film, but far fewer have analyzed this topic within the context of poetry. The representation of immigrant experience in poetic texts is significant not only because poetic works have received less attention, but also because of the significance of poetry within North African and Islamic culture. Manuel Moya’s recent award-winning collection places the question of North African immigration as a central concern. The text purports to offer a compilation of poetry produced by the Western Saharan immigrant Umar Abass, who currently resides in Madrid. The work …
The Song Of Disappearance: Memory, History, And Testimony In The Poetry Of Antonio Gamoneda, Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza
The Song Of Disappearance: Memory, History, And Testimony In The Poetry Of Antonio Gamoneda, Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay explores Antonio Gamoneda’s poetry as an Adornian form of testimony. With its enigmatic foregrounding of lies, the book-length poem Descripción de la mentira ‘Description of the Lie’ can be read as a “contradictory testimony” in which the act and memory of witnessing go, as it were, underground—only to resurface, rife with loss, years after Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Yet the abstruse character of this poetic writing prevents readers from drawing straightforward political truths about Spanish history from the poem. Losses are inscribed in the text catachrestically, as they truly are: losses. Gamoneda’s poetry has been read …
Poetic Vision And (In)Visible Pain In Antonio Méndez Rubio’S Trasluz, Paul Cahill
Poetic Vision And (In)Visible Pain In Antonio Méndez Rubio’S Trasluz, Paul Cahill
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Since the 1980s, visibility has played a key role in debates surrounding Spanish poetry. Novísimo ‘very new’ poets have highlighted and explored the instability and uncertainty of the gaze, while poetas de la experiencia ‘poets of experience’ have more readily accepted the visible without questioning it or the mechanisms used to construct it. Poets who entered the literary scene in the mid to late 1990s have also entered this discussion. Antonio Méndez Rubio, the author of twelve poetry collections and numerous critical and theoretical works, is a poet whose work does not fit easily within the categories usually employed to …
Poetry Wars, Sylvia R. Sherno
Poetry Wars, Sylvia R. Sherno
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The status of poetry in Spain over the last several decades has provided fodder for a surprisingly contentious dispute, perhaps particularly remarkable for devotees and critics on these shores, where poetry has a limited readership…
In The Heideggerian Tradition: Acontecimiento By Concha García, Martha Lafollette Miller
In The Heideggerian Tradition: Acontecimiento By Concha García, Martha Lafollette Miller
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Critics Sharon Keefe Ugalde and Tina Escaja have called the poetry of Concha García “enigmatic,” “unique,” and “avant-garde.” Studies of her work to date tend to attribute the fragmentation and discontinuity of her poetic discourse to her rejection of phallologocentric language. While one of her work’s chief concerns is indeed her speaker’s sense of a radical difference and alienation based on gender, her poetry at the same time directs her reader’s attention to more general ontological considerations. Rather than clearly recounting the events of the life of her poetic protagonist, she rejects the distillations and simplifications that linear narration presupposes …
Beyond The Pale: “Poesía Postpoética” In Agustín Fernández Mallo’S Joan Fontaine Odisea, W. Michael Mudrovic
Beyond The Pale: “Poesía Postpoética” In Agustín Fernández Mallo’S Joan Fontaine Odisea, W. Michael Mudrovic
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In a recent article defining his concept of “poesía postpoética,” Agustín Fernández Mallo chides and challenges his contemporaries for being behind the times. While not completely eschewing more traditional techniques of intertextuality and imagery, Fernández Mallo does stress the need to incorporate scientific and mathematical imagery. His book-length poem, Joan Fontaine Odisea (mi deconstrucción) (2005), exemplifies his “poesía postpoética” in its use of allusions to high and popular culture, and scientific concepts, along different types of discourse, to disrupt the commonplace perception of a unified poetic voice. This article will focus on Joan Fontaine Odisea as a modern poetic sequence …
Reading Sara Pujol Russell’S Poetry Of Contemplation And Connection, Anita M. Hart
Reading Sara Pujol Russell’S Poetry Of Contemplation And Connection, Anita M. Hart
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Sara Pujol Russell’s poetry captures a process of expanding consciousness and personal renewal. Through contemplation and attention to nature, the poet-speaker in her works generates a sense of connection that moves her beyond daily concerns. Pujol’s poetry is both metaphysical and also different in that it resists easy classification and is not representative of mainstream trends. This essay approaches the distinctiveness of Pujol’s work by studying selected poems from her third book of poetry in Spanish, Para decir sí a la carencia, sí a la naranja, al azafrán en el pan (2004) ‘To Say Yes to Lack, Yes to the …