In Search of Elysium: Spanish Poetry of Difference at the Dawn of the 21St

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In Search of Elysium: Spanish Poetry of Difference at the Dawn of the 21st

Century

David Gómez-Cambronero Madrid

April 2016

MA of Arts in Spanish, The Ohio State Univeristy June 2010.

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Comittee Chair: Maria Paz Moreno, Ph.D.

2016

Abstract

This work both reconstructs and demystifies Spain’s poetic literary field at the dawn of the 21st century, during which a cultural conflict brewed between the centralized and hegemonic “poets of experience” and the marginalized and counter-hegemonic “poets of difference”. Surging quickly to national notoriety and canonicity after the publication of their 1982 manifesto, the immense literary and social influence of the poets of experience began to fall out of favor by the early 1990s. This cultural ebbing allowed for the emergence of a new group, the poets of difference, who sought for an innovative, individualistic, aesthetic and their own place in the rich lineage of Spanish poetry. By employing the sociocultural theories of Pierre Bourdieu and

Itamar Even-Zohar, this work examines the social discourses and mechanisms of this particular ethos in order to bring light to the heterodox poets of difference as portrayed through the works of Federico Gallego Ripoll and Juan Carlos Mestre.

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Abstract

0. A Renaissance of Differences: Counter Hegemony in Late 20th Century Spanish Poetry……1

1. Bourdieu and Even-Zohar: A Dualistic Approach to Sociocultural Theory…………………..17

1.1. Bourdieu’s Field Theory: Thinking Tools………………………………………...…….21

1.2. Even-Zohar: Polysystem………………………………………...……………………....34

1.3. Ancillary Theories...…………………………………………………..………...………43

2. Poetry of Experience: Rise to Literary Hegemony……………………………………………48

2.1 From La otra sentimentalidad to Cultural Prominence………………………………….48

2.2 Legitimation, Symbolic Violence and the appearance of the other……………………...62

3. Poetry of Difference: Emergence and Dissonance……………………………………………73

3.1. Of Différance and Difference………………………………………………………….. 73

3.2. Democratic Transition and New Poetic Discourses…………………………………...... 77

3.3. The Poetry of Experience and its dominance during the 1980s and 1990s……………..85

3.4. A Revolution of diferencia……………………………………………………………...88

3.5. The Aftermath of Difference…………………………………………………………..100

3.6. The Poetry of the New Millenium……………………………………………………..109

4. Federico Gallego Ripoll and the Invisible Poet: From Darkness to Light…………………..117

4.1. Formation, Insularity, Disillusionment, Exile and Rebellion………………………….117

4.2. Verses from Barcelona or the Labyrinth of Identity…………………………………...134

4.3. Silence and poetry beside the sea………………………………………………………141

4.4. Embracing the poetic invisibility; conclusions………………………………………...150

5. The difference of Juan Carlos Mestre or Heterodoxy in Orthodoxy………………………...156

5.1. Beginnings and marginality……………………………………………………………156

5.2. The formative years: The familiar and the fantastic…………………………………...169

5.3. Chile and revolution……………………………………………………………………173

5.4. Social awakening: Rome, La tumba de Keats and the 1990s………………………….177

5.5. Prominence, liberty and crisis in the new millennium…………………………………182

5.6. From marginal heterodoxy to marginal orthodoxy…………………………………….194

6. Conclusion: The Fate of the Avant-garde in Contemporary Spanish Poetics……………….198

7. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………210

0. A Renaissance of Differences: Counter Hegemony in Late 20th Century Spanish Poetry

Our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of man has broken with the old order of things hitherto prevailing, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Thus begins this tale, one of struggles and strife between the old and the new, a battle within the immanent transcendental geist of time, space, society and culture, and whose only possible resolution is, precisely, synthetic (r)evolution. In lieu of other possible introductions, accept then this Archimedean point of reference: the problem being documented is one of cultural disparity in the Spanish poetic literary field at the twilight of the 20th century, more specifically the polemic between the centralized hegemonic group known as the poets of experience and the marginalized counter-hegemonic rhyzomatic grouping, the poets of difference. This dialectic has its nascence as early as the public dissemination of the poets of experience’s manifesto titled La otra sentimentalidad (The other sentimentality) in 1982, after which its members consciously and willingly tailored their group’s ideological and aesthetic tendencies to align themselves with key political and cultural systems during the Spanish democratic transition period (post-1975). Under the leadership of the (in)famous Spanish poet

Luis García Montero, the poets of experience grew to command a supreme and almost inexorable presence in the poetic fields of the 1980s and early 1990s, due to their manipulation of national prize awards and literary venues of publication, and also during this time securing considerable symbolic and economic support from institutions such as the Spanish government and university systems.

Thus poetry and the field of Spanish poetics throughout this period would be dominated by the traditional and realist aesthetic of these “poets of experience” –set up as the canonical hegemony– who suppressed and silenced those poets who were not in line with their literary current. This continued until a resistance movement in opposition to their hegemony and centralized position would elicit the birth of a counter hegemonic and marginal movement in the mid-1990s that one could identify as a poetry of independent differences. Although anti- systemic and experimental poetry (that which sustained avant-garde sensibilities) had been practiced on a reduced, latent and local scale throughout the zenith period of the poets of experience, it was not until 1994 that a group of poets rallied as a single voice in direct opposition to what they saw as an oppressive literary hegemony that had been purposely stifling new poetic tendencies in order to retain control over the systems of power and symbolic capital. Ratifying their own manifesto called the Manifiesto de Granada (Manifesto of Granada), these poets publicly denounced the poetry of experience and its members, labeling them as conservative, non-progressive, corrupt, manipulative and clone-like. They marshaled instead for a different aesthetic, one that had no clear center or fixed signifiers, where each poet was free to express themselves as they wished and, moreover, that this lack of adherence to any fixed group and an inherent “otherness” would not mean the automatic devaluation of their poetic works (as had previously been the case). Although, at the time, their efforts received strong backlash from critics and public alike, their message –poetic difference from the status quo of the poets of experience– would soon resonate and be upheld throughout the Spanish nation and its numerous literary and poetic circles, prompting an aesthetic and ideological “underground” renaissance and resistance in what would become known as the década de la diferencia (decade of difference). It was therefore during the late 1990s and early

2000s that an ideological clash for hierarchal power occurred between the mostly homogenized and canonized poets of experience and the culturally marginalized and fragmented poets of difference, as each of its members fought for the liberty of their own voice, individual mode of expression and, moreover, heterogeneity within the contemporary field of poetry.

Even while the poets of difference labored for artistic freedom from the literary margins, the poets of experience would not yield their hold on power until well into the early- mid 2000s. Therefore, the tale of the trials and tribulations of the poets of difference and their search for individualistic expression is one that has unfortunately still received only a modicum of critical attention and documentation (alongside accordingly little mind given to understanding their difference as a fractured gestalt), and even less so in languages and institutions outside of Spain. This is where this investigation hopes to intervene and lay bare the mechanisms of the poetic fields of this contemporary era in question and demonstrate the influence that the “poets of difference” had in shaping the literary and poetic history of contemporary Spain, despite their marginalized positions and disparate poetics. To achieve this end, two specific poets have been selected to function as iconic exemplars of the many diverse and dencentralized streams of “difference” and how they formed part of and were influenced by this literary clash; these are Federico Gallego Ripoll and Juan Carlos Mestre. The selection of these two particular poets of difference mainly revolves around the following points, which they generally share in common: 1. their inclusion in literary fields that are understood to be divergent from the centers of power, 2. diversity of geographic locations which aid in identifying multiple poetic nexuses of difference, 3. hosting unique and invididual aesthetic styles which break from canonical tradition, 4. inclusion in anthologies which are known to be counter-hegemonic, 5. respectably sized oeuvre with accompanying literary awards and

3 recognition that distinguish them for the literary layman, and 6. a final (and on-going) symbolic emergence from a sub-altern state which coincides with the poetic sensibilities of the new millennium.

The juxtaposition of these particular poets of difference alongside the spirit of their socio-historical conditions (“literary field”) is both vital and necessary in order to capture the complete luminary spectrum of fin de siècle Spanish poetics, and (re)produce it as a discursive photograph as observed from both sides of the dialectic (experience/difference); or otherwise, as the theoretical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu states, “The spectator deprived of this historic competence is doomed to the indifference of one who does not have the means to make differentiations.” (Rules of Art 248).1 Moreoever, Bourdieu explains the crucial signification of an integrated biographical analysis (“habitus”) in concert with literary studies –a diachronic and evolutionary point of view– in a chapter aptly titled “The Author’s Point of View”:

Biographical analysis thus understood can lead us to the principles of the evolution of

the work of art in the course of time. Positive or negative sanctions, success or failure,

encouragements or warnings, consecration or exclusion, all indicating to each writer

(etc.) - and the ensemble of his rivals - the objective truth of the position he occupies

and his probable future, are effectively one set of the major mediations through which

the incessant redefinition of the 'creative project' is shaped, with failure encouraging

1 Bourdieusian theory generally asserts that art, artist and social context are part and parcel of one another (to be discussed in subsequent chapters): “Bourdieu criticizes art critiques for concealing the social conditions which constituted their object of study – the artist and the artwork – and the artistic perspective that they themselves articulate. The art world is further criticized by Bourdieu for presenting the aesthetic experience as timeless and a- historic, thus promoting an illusion of the "absolute" regarding art. Bourdieu holds that both art and perceptions of art are historical constructs and as such are the result of specific conditions and processes in the art world.” (The Cultural Reader). 4

reconversion or retreat from the field, and consecration reinforcing and liberating initial

ambitions. (Rules of Art 260).

In order to achieve this goal, the theoretical thinking tools of Pierre Bourdieu and

Itamar Even-Zohar will be employed as the methodology and methods for exposing the sociocultural machinery of this dialectic of difference and experience, as well as concurrently demonstrating the literary involvement and position takings of the two noted poets. On one hand, Even-Zohar’s Polysystem theory is vital in eschewing the tradition model of portraying only the canonized hegemonic structures and texts, and conversely resurrecting the non- canonized forms which are generally relegated to a certain obscurity by abstract culturally defined notions of ethics, values and tastes. Through the implication of poly-system theory, the goal is to elucidate an understanding of the constant tensions, fluxes and syntheses between the strata of the center and its unavoidable periphery, as they must be understood to function bilaterally and are always already inexorably interconnected. On the other hand, Bourdieu’s so- called theory of fields (or, at times, theory of practice/praxis) is expressed primarily through the three theoretical functions, or “thinking tools”, of habitus (socially produced individual), capital (external and personal resources) and field (space of social struggle). In an abbreviated fashion, bourdieusian theory seeks to demonstrate an individual agent’s (in this case, the poets) actions, practices and productions within their respective competitive fields according to the intersection of cultural, social and material forces, which invisibly surround and influence their behavior. Together, both theories will function as the unique foundational matrix and the scientific optic through which the entire project will be analyzed, as well as the nexus that will link the varying social-poetic systems, texts and authors.

All points coagulated, this work will branch into four chapters and subchapters, each highlighting certain aspects of the Spanish poetic field and its inhabitants at the end of the 20th and into the 21st century. This introduction covers the basic premise, the state of the question and introduces the theoretical methodology and language of Bourdieu, Even-Zohar and other ancillary theories that will be expressed throughout the investigation. The first chapter chronicles the cultural rise and inculcation of the poetry of experience as the hegemonic elite, their tactics of dissemination and legitimation and, consequently, their fall from the literary mainstream. The crucial second chapter recreates the ethos and mechanisms of the other side of the coin, detailing the insurgence and struggles of the poets of difference, and thus culminating with a final demonstration of the ramifications of their literary desautomatzatoin and fragmentation into the new millennium. The following two chapters demonstrate the poetic individuality of the mentioned poets of difference, and how these serve to exemplify the

Spanish poetic periphery, their symbolic fight with the center and the search for their own literary identity and poetic voice. In the final chapter, the conclusions drawn by this project will endeavor to demonstrate the overarching impact of the poets of difference and, moreover, how their works have shaped the poetic-literary canon of the end of the 20th century as evidenced by their role in the evolution and formation of new poetic forms that have emerged at dawn of the 21st century. In the end, there is hope in proving that these poets and their unique literary movement, regardless of mainstream sensibilities, have found a suitable place in the legacy of the Spanish poetic field.

Now that context has been established, a few remaining introductory points necessitate attention. Most importantly, as alluded to previously, in order to construct and display an image of the broader discourses and mechanisms at work during this epoch, the primary hermeneutical

6 points will be that of an individual sociocultural being of each poet (or habitus), their insertion into the parameters and essence of difference vis-à-vis experience (or field positions), along with the decoding (both internally and externally) of the texts (or glossed text excerpts) which are both the fruits of their labors and meta-cultural productions. Furthermore, as will elaborated in the following chapters, it is prudent to restate that the poetry of difference is not a unified whole2 but rather an abstract and symbolic idea of poetic discordance and innovation under whose banner poets can, have and continue to rally around a posteriori. Given this ample context, the election of one of the many poets of difference over another would only yield a change in individual perspective, and not presuppose a radical epistemological or ontological directional shift in overall scope of the investigation. Therefore, the selection of these two particular poets remains more or less discursively equal to that of one of their contemporaries

(assuming they fit within the previously established criteria). As such, a brief presentation of

Federico Gallego Ripoll and Carlos Mestre is in order:

Federico Gallego Ripoll (Manzanares, Ciudad Real, 1953), both a poet and painter, founded the literary and esthetic circle of Bauma in 1993, “Círculo de Bauma”3, and was originally classified as an independent poet of diferencia in Antonio Rodríguez Jiménez’s anthology Elogio a la Diferencia (1997). Gallego Ripoll’s works are wrought with vitalism, memory, self-reflection, isolation, and are also peppered with hints of the poetics of conciencia

2 An attempt was made by Gregorio Morales to corroborate a unifying esthetic in his La diferencia cuántica (1995), but ultimately failed to gain wide spread acceptance; however, in 1999 a unique poetic group was formed using its ideologies and preconceptions. 3 From 1993 to 1996 a group of poets, many of which would later be classified in critical works as poets who broke the poetic mold of their times (poets of diferencia), would meet regularly at Bar Bauma. These reunions would eventually lead to an ideologically cohesive publication of short poetic works known as plaquettes; “Por aquel entonces asistía a las tertulias de poesía del Bar Bauma, en la Avenida Diagonal de Barcelona. Allí tuve ocasión de conocer a poetas de Barcelona como Eduard Sanahuja, Jordi Virallonga, Federico Gallego Ripoll, Concha García, José Ángel Cilleruelo, Sergio Gaspar, Juan Francisco Martín, Mª Antonia Martínez, Teresa Shaw o Esther Zarraluki. Más tarde, esos encuentros cristalizarían en un grupo de poetas editores de la Colección de plaquettes Bauma.” (Goya Gutiérrez). 7 crítica as well (most notably in this regard is his book Los poetas invisibles). Intertextuality in his poems can also be drawn from the Generación del 27, the French poet Henri Bergson, poets from his native La Mancha, and countless others. His poetic opus consists of fourteen titles beginning with the publication of his initial book of poems titled Poemas del Condottiero (Rialp,

1981), Quien, la realidad. (Hiperión, 2002), Los poetas invisibles. (Visor, 2007), and leading to his most recent work, Dentro del día, acaso. (Algaida, 2011), which is a compilation of selected poems. Various texts find themselves an integral part of various local and national anthologies, including Mar Interior, edited by Spanish critic Miguel Casado, as well as Un lugar donde esperarte (2008), Por vivir aquí. Antología de poetas catalanes en castellano (2003), Antología general de Adonais (1989), and numerous others. Additionally, he also appears in Elogio de la diferencia (1997) by Antonio Rodríguez Jiménez, a seminal text in the formation and understanding of the group of diferencia. Gallego Ripoll’s notable prizes include: Jaén de Poesía,

San Juan de la Cruz, Ciudad de Irún and Emilio Marcos. In Poesía española del 90 (2008),

Beatriz Ferrari forwards the dichotomy between the poetas clónicos, poets that are merely representative clones of one another and the centralized discourse, and the poetas no clónicos, representing the poets whose creation is idiosyncratic, independent and eccentric. Gallego Ripoll, as a poet no clónico, and as such has proliferated beneath the dominant position and ideology and comes into his own true poetic identity by the early 2000s.

In an analogous mode, Juan Carlos Mestre (Villafranca del Bierzo, León, 1957) is a poet

–also an artist and performer– who is also categorized by Beatriz Ferrari as a poet of diferencia, intitially due to his inclusion in the anthology El hilo de la fábula. Una antología de poesia española actual. (1995). In this anthology, editor Antonio Garrido Moraga marks the thirteen poets (Mestre among them) as having a common poetic thread that differentiates them from the

8 poetry of experiencia4, that is, a step away from the realist-autobiographic aesthetic and into a reimagining of both classic and contemporary avant-garde poetic forms, using:

La simbolización como mecanismo universal de la codificación artística que pretende la

atemporalidad del mensaje, una acepción de la experiencia que incluye lo real dentro de

lo imaginario, la superación de la anécdota y la mera denotación, la reinterpretación de

los mitos, las selección léxica y el gusto por el ritmo, huellas barrocas y modernistas y

culto a la imaginación como base de la simbolización. (Beatriz Ferrari 35).

Mestre has been the recipient of numerous literary prizes throughout the past three decades including: Premio Adonais de Poesia (1982), Premio Jaime Gil de Biedma (1992), Premio

Nacional de Poesía (2009) and Premio de la Crítica de poesía castellana (2012). His first poetry published work is Siete poemas escritos junto a la lluvia (Coleccion Amarilis, 1982) and his trajectory includes award winning works such as La poesía ha caído en desgracia (Visor, 1992),

La tumba de Keats (Hiperión, 1999) along with a dozen other collections dating up through

2013. Aside from inclusion in a number of Spanish anthologies, he is also the author of various literary essays, paintings and other artistic designs. Mestre’s poetics, while multi-faceted, include a search for identity, spirituality and symbolism, and a vidid sense of fantastic imagination, all of which are enabled by a resistance against the linguistic status quo, popular political rhetoric and the hegemonic forces articulated through and attempting to dampen creative language use5.

4 In fact, Beatriz Ferrari mentions that Garrido Moraga does not mince words when he mentions directly, and “nada ingenuamente” (34), the poesía de la experiencia as a poetic ideology that needs to be transcended. 5 In an interview with Contratiempo titled Juan Carlos Mestre: La poesía frente a los discursos de dominación, Mestre notes that his poems are an act of “delicada resistencia ante y contra los diversos grados de fuerza y de dominación que ejerce el poder sobre el lenguaje.” (Mestre). 9

There has been a gap in scholarship regarding these poets, their texts, aesthetics and ideologies, most evident when juxposted in portraying the narrative of the entire disparate field of the poetry of difference in the late 20th and early 21st century rather than isolated strains or pingeonholed into abstract “groups”. Throughout the 1980’s and the early 1990’s in the Spanish poetic field, criticism or dissent from the margins towards the hegemonic and dominant poetic aesthetic had been somewhat muted and, moreover, minimal; as one critic would state in regards to the “othered” poets, “el silencio ha sido la tónica dominante” (Menéndez Rubio 122).

However, criticism towards the poetry of experience and its conservative-clasicist tendencies begins to foment in the mid to late 1990’s with texts such as the Colectivo Alicia Bajo Cero’s

Poesía y Poder (1992) and outcrys such as that of the short lived group known as the poets of diferencia in 1994. This also includes anti-systemic works including La palabra itinerante, La

Bella Varsovia, El Águila Ediciones and El Club de los Borrikos libres, the previously mentioned counter hegemonic anthologies of Antonio Ortega’s La prueba del nueve (1994),

Antonio Garrido Moraga’s El hilo de la fábula (1995) and Antonio Rodríguez Jiménez Elogio de la diferencia (1997), as well as a bevy of literary articles, local journals and newspaper coverage such as “El sindicato del crimen. Antología de la poesía dominante” (1994) by Eligio Rabanera and “Los poetas de la diferencia arremeten” (1994) by Marí Arenaza. These are only a small segment of the works that will be uncovered and analyzed in this study under the greater context of differences.

Indeed, the expression of this particular poetic difference would be followed up in the new millenium with numerous internet blogs and other technical outlets which would also disseminate and praise the song of the periphery –a couple notable examples include Crítica poética Addison de Witt and Poetas Siglo XI + 11.600 Poetas de 185 Países– as well as even

10 more critical dialogues such as Araceli Iravedra’s “Radicales, marginales y heterodoxos en la

última poesía española (contra la poesía de la experiencia)” (2006), De la “normalidad” a la

“extrañeza” (2007) and Blanca Andreu’s well-known “Una reclamación” (2000)6. Jonathan

Mayhew’s The Twilight of the Avant Garde (2009) offers a comprehensive and scathing critique against García Montero and those of the poetry of experience (citing in some cases homophobia, lack of talent, etc.), but ultimately does not follow up on the poetry of difference and focuses mainly on the discourse of female authors; Crespo Massieu attempts to give a brief trajectory of the marginalized poetry of the era (diferencia being only mentioned by extension) in his text La poesía y los márgenes (2007); Transitar El Parpadeo (2008) by Marcos Canteli

Vigón which debates the role of the Spanish critics in repressing poets into a blurred state; Luis

Bagué Quílez’s Poesía en pie de paz (2006) attempts to identify every strand of poetry in contemporary Spanish poetics; and one of the few manuscripts on the subject of the most recent poetry (21st century) by young poets born around 1980 or later includes Poetas del siglo

XXI. Los caminos de la joven poesía española. by Alicia López Operé, which deals with the implications of anthologies during this end of the century period and the characteristics of some of this“postmodern” generation.

Meanwhile, there is also the neutral perspective, such as Julieta Valero’s “Poesía española actual: de la norma hacia la diversidad” (2013), and, of course, the self-legitimating statements and counter arguments against the “other” invoked by García Montero (and affiliates), including “Una musa vestida con vaqueros. La poesía de la experiencia.” (2012).

Other contemporary studies range from hegemonic to counter-hegemonic stances, but shed a limited light on the preceeding decades of poetics with the benefit of hindsight, including: Poesía

6 These are but a taste of the anti-systemic and counter hegemonic discourse at play in the poetic field of the era, they will be discussed and amplified during Chapter I and onwards (or reference the bibliography). 11 después de la poesía (2006) by Jiménez Millán, Juan José Lanz’s La poesía durante la

Transición (2007), Nuevas voces y viejas escuelas en la poesía española (1970-2005) (2007) by

Juan Cano Ballesta, Antologías poéticas entre dos siglos (2007) by Ángel L.Prieto de Paula, J.C.

Suñen’s ¿Crítica militante? Problemas de la poesía al fin del milenio, Iraceli Iravedra’s

Palabras de familia gastadas tibiamente. (Notas para la historia de un paradigma lírico),

Antonio Orihuela’s Voces del extremo. Las voces de la poesía española al otro extremo de la centuria and lastly Barbara Morales’ Poetas y poéticas para la España del siglo XXI (2008).

Aside from these texts, there are additionally handfuls of online newspapers, anthologies, journals and other sources that mention more specific issues in an informal manner and will be touched upon when required.

While it is irreconcilable that the poets of difference consciously or subconsciously yearned for a poetic revolution in all senses –liberté, égalité, fraternité– in response to their subaltern and subordinate cultural position, in retrospect, many of the certifiably talented poets eventually superseded their lower hierarchy strata by obtaining prizes, illustrious publications and national notoriety (case in point, the very poets selected in this study). Scarano further elaborates this point by stating that “Los antagonistas, que se llamaron “diferentes” o

“silenciosos”, argumentaron “bloqueos u obstáculos a su vida literaria” aunque casi todos publicaron sus libros, obtuvieron sus cargos y sus premios.” (El sindicato), an understanding which prompts the rhetorical question, “¿Por qué la disputa entonces?” (El sindicato). Scarano continues; “La dialéctica del margen social frente a los centros de poder no parece ser el camino para abolir las injusticias emanadas de las diferencias, sino más bien para justificar su existencia.” (El sindicato), which is to say that the position takings of the many voices of difference, coupled with the de-alignment of the poetry of experience with the socio-cultural and

12 political elite the late 20th century, would eventually lead them, regardless of intentions, to in some way occupy a unique and unlikely “decentralized” center of power7. There was no doubt then that the poets of experience expectedly refuted the poets of difference for the very reason that their expansion would in turn lower their social strata, repress their acquisition of symbolic capital and power, and de-legitimate them and their works, while at the same time augmenting the position of the “other”;

La verdadera molestia reside en que este antiheroico poeta viene a desplazar un lugar

fatigosamente adquirido por la tradición del género en la modernidad; socava los restos

de ese exiguo capital simbólico que el poeta retiene entre sus manos en el gesto orgulloso

de saberse (aunque ya nadie se atrevería a confesarlo públicamente) “diferente”. (El

sindicato).

However, as with the wax and wane of the moon, change was to be inevitable and in that same decade the critic Virgilio Tortosa would write that the future of Spanish poetry is one forged in a periphery of differences– “la escritura del nuevo siglo sería diferencial o no será”

(58)– recounting the events of those that have been marginalized by history and foreshadowing that the poetry of experience will give way to the poetry of difference; Tortosa unknowingly hinted at the inevitable breakdown of the dominant poetic field of the late 20th century, in spite of their attempts to oppress the inevitable Marxist rebellion. In the declining times of the poetry of experience, the difference would take a (fragmented) center with their unique, pluralistic and polysemic aesthetics and ideologies. As one cannot discount the workings of the center nor the

7 This was what Scarano called the “juego de ostentar “el orgullo de ser diferente”, con el ya deslucido glamour de la pose marginal” (El Sindicato). 13 margin –as both are interwoven and interdependent– it can be thereby hypothetically argued that both positions will eventually arrive instead at a synthesis or equilibrium, one which serves to finally evolve the Spanish poetic field at the beginning of the 21st century; as the British philosopher John Stuart Mill aptly stated, progress or improvement comes from conflict, and conflict requires diversity. Therefore, to inherently argue against the poets of experience is would be fallacious; instead the correct path is to show their antithetical discourse while simultaneously portraying the deautomatization function of difference, or in formalist terms,

“Evolution is caused by the need for ceaseless dynamics. Every dynamic system inevitably becomes automatized and an opposite constructive principle dialectically arises” (Tynianov qtd. in Sanders).

Echoing what Julián Jiménez Heffernan insightfully deliberates in Los papeles rotos

(2004) – this investigation is not calling for a simple dual approach to contemporary Spanish poetry, but rather a deviation into a supernova of variegated discourses and significations (that is, heterogeneity), that is, the deconstruction of the center wherein the heterodoxy becomes the new orthodoxy going forward. It has been due in part to a subjective literary criticism, notably in

Spain, which has played into what Stanley Phish refers to as a the theory of the interpretive community –wherein meaning is determined by the majority, or simply, vox populis– and thus contemporary poetic discourse has revolved around a vortex of unnecessary binaries

(canon/avant-garde). Though in an undefined overarching context, the binary of experience and difference will serve as an aperitif to the exploration of a deeper free play of signification, the unraveling of difference is the primary concern:

Es ridículo pensar que solo hay dos bandos en liza, y que estos pretendan, como está

ocurriendo, usurpar centralidad en el campo literario. Frente a la situación

descentralizada, rizomaica, del escenario poético norteamericano, con diferentes

editoriales y universidades oficiando de ganglios de poder, una situación envidiable que

permite la existencia de, al menos, cinco versiones distintas de la poesía norteamericana

actual, en España padecemos un penoso centralismo oficialista: una macrofísica del poder.

Un ansia de protagonismo que induce a pensar que la poesía, la concepción de lo poético,

sólo puede ser una. Esto es en gran medida achacable a la excesiva domesticación

universitaria de la exégesis poética, obsesionada con el commentaire du texte, el

historicismo, el generacionismo. (…) El enemigo real de la modernidad poética no ha

sido la poesía pseudo realista. Ha sido cierta crítica literaria. (Jiménez Heffernan 323) .

The poetry which is different is poetry without a center, a mimetic representation of the unstable and deconstructive nature of a jazz soloist playing a song of radical departure of functional harmony and rigid meters, breaking convention in a free space of tonality and rhythm, in an infinite exploration of structure and representation. Thus the task that emerges is collecting the souls of these fragmented “avant-garde” voices8 in the discourse of the poetry of difference – all brought together by the very difference that defines them– and bring light to them through a singular prism, thereby constructing a diachronic vision of the unsung decade of difference. This vision includes the dialectic of both the mainstream poets and poetry of experience while paving

8 Bourdieu explains the nature of homogeneity and fracturazition between center/margin groups and how it indelibly becomes a reality in cultural and social systems: “Whereas the occupants of the dominant positions (especially in economic terms, such as the bourgeois theatre) are very homogeneous, the avant-garde positions, which are defined mainly negatively, in opposition to the dominant positions, bring together for a while. (in the phase of the initial accumulation of symbolic capital) writers and artists who are very different in their origins and their dispositions and whose interests, momentarily coming together, will later start to diverge.” (Rules of Art 153). 15 the road for those that may have been placed in the fringes of power, the poets and poetry of difference, lest they be misrepresented in the annals of historic and cultural memory of the contemporary Spanish literary field. It is the story of a quest of innumerable poets to craft their own voice and to search for their personal Elysium within the still vibrant Spanish poetic field at the turn of the century; “estas polémicas han alimentado saludablemente -a pesar de algunos excesos retóricos- el debate cultural en la España de las últimas décadas (…) nos habla de la vitalidad de un género que produce controversias porque sigue vivo.” (El sindicato). It is, in a sense, a renewed vision of the very fabric of culture and progress that drives the motor of literary studies and production, and ultimately serves the survival and evolution of the poetic genus into the new millennium.

1. Bourdieu and Even-Zohar: a dualistic approach to fields of social and cultural power

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, is the most iconic and encapsulating line in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and can serve as a gateway to the understanding of the ideological polemics and struggles brewing in the late 20th, and early

21st century, Spanish poetic circles. This investigation will not attend directly to theoretical western Marxism, since as Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci both noted, society cannot be analyzed solely by economic class struggles nor can materialism be the only driving force towards revolution or synthesis. Instead, a social theoretical framework will be employed to demonstrate the mechanisms of cultural interplay and intertextuality between the poets of experience and, with more emphasis, those of difference. In order to achieve these ends, a dual pronged approach will be implemented: 1. Pierre Bourdieu’s social theories on field, power and habitus as aggregated in The Field of Cultural Production (1993) and Rules of Art (1996); and 2.

Itamar Even-Zohar’s Polysystem Theory regarding the creation of the literary cannon and its involvement in the complex web of stratified relations between center and periphery. Bourdieu’s and Even-Zohar’s socio-cultural theoretical frameworks are analogous and complementary, as

Pozuelo Yvancos and Rosa Adrada have previously argued for and demonstrated successfully in

Teoría del canon y literatura española9, and will serve to demonstrate a more robust picture of the poetic discourse of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

In this investigation, the individual texts, and even their authors, will not be isolated from their societal discourse or historical context instead of the separation of text and author which

9 Pozuelo Yvancos adapts these sociocultural and systemic theories to 18th and 19th century canonical literature in Spain, and can be extrapolated to meet the needs of this investigation, much like has been done in Carlos Gutierrez’s La espada, el rayo y la pluma (2005) and other similar works. 17 has been relevant in past theoretical instances10. In this particular case, it would be fallacy to assume that the Spanish poetic works of the 1980’s and onward, some of which have even been coined as poe-lí-ticas11due to their social and cultural involvement, can be viewed as an entity void of external signification (though in a postmodern epoch, either function cannot be discounted as an valid undertaking). According to Bourdieu, exploring a text “without making reference to the economic or social conditions of the production of the work or of its producers”

(Rules of Art 196) is to deny the total intertextual zeitgeist of a particular épistémè and its taxonomical “cultural order”. As will be demonstrated in the following chapters, the specific discursive eras of this study are ripe with extra and para-textual signification and can be seen through the poets and their works.

On one hand, the necessity of authorial intent and a new historical approach on displaying the sociocultural stage, provokes the involvement of social theory as an explanatory tool and thus opens the doors for a “pure reading”. As Bourdieu describes, pure reading is a practice outlined in The Rules of Art (1996), wherein he invites the critic to partake in an analysis of the social conditions of possibility of a singular system (Rules of Art 304), be it literature, society, and so forth. The intent of this approach is to seemingly not to isolate texts within their own esoteric and syntactic structures, but rather engage them alongside the social conditions from which they exist:

10 Bourdieu provides a logical defense to a purely text based, formalist reading: “Paradoxically, formalist criticism which sees itself as free of any reference to institutions, tacitly accepts all the theses inscribed in the existence of the institution from which it derives authority. It tends to exclude any real questioning of the institution of reading, that is, any challenge to the delimitations of the corpus of texts consecrated by the institutions as much as to a definition of the legitimate mode of reading which apprehends (according to more or less codified interpretative frameworks) texts constituted as self-sufficient realities, concealing within themselves their reason for being.” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 304). 11 Virgilio Tortosa in De poe-lítica: el canon literario de los noventa states that “(...) todo canon literario es una construcción poe(lí)tica de la realidad textual: por mucho que se pretenda lo contrario, lo político no deja de ser poético, toda vez que lo poético se presenta siempre como político.” (75). 18

(…) the pure reading that the most advanced works of the avant-garde imperatively

require and that the critics and other professional readers tend to apply to any legitimate

work is a social institution which is the end result of a whole history of the field of

cultural production. (Bourdieu Rules of Art 161).

Precisely, reconstructing the particular sociocultural ethos (or social institution) that surrounds a text or author is imperative to a critical exploration of the historicity of a particular field; in a

Berkelian sense, that which is not immediately perceived still warrants understanding. The link between the agent and the text-system is therefore the key to this analysis: “Knowledge of the model permits us to understand how it happens that agents (…) may be what they are and do what they do.” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 272).

On the other hand, failure to link the sociocultural element to a text is a critical trap that

Bourdieu assesses as the “poverty of ahistoricism” (Rules of Art 309) and, furthermore, by not reconstructing (or decoding) the space, position and relations of text and author is condemns one

“to an anachronistic and ethnocentric understanding which is likely to be fictive (…) Only social history can effectively supply the means to rediscover the historical truth.” (Bourdieu Rules of

Art 309-311). By contrast, the notion of system or field (as detailed in the following section)

“allows us to bypass the opposition between internal reading and external analysis without losing any of the benefits and exigencies of these two approaches which are traditionally perceived as irreconcilable.” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 205). These conclusions can be extrapolated to the theories of Even-Zohar, as he personally claims certain cohesive conclusions between their theoretical social systems; “Pierre Bourdieu and several of his collaborators, who, without any real connection to Dynamic Structuralism (Functionalism) or Formalism, have arrived at many

19 similar conclusions.” (Polysystem Studies 5). In sum, both Even-Zohar and Bourdieu are in a sense social stratification theories involving a Nietzschean struggle for power between orthodoxy and heterodoxy12 and, though generative and not deterministic, identify the inexorable arrival at a legitimate culture of a system.

Before entering into a brief overview of the two main theoretical components of this study, there is a point which needs to be addressed. This study contains a small amount of data gathered from direct interviews with the three mentioned poets. While interviews are inherently subjective, snippets may be symbolically injected for three potential reasons: 1. As Bourdieu suggests, the nature of habitus inherently allows for an eye to eye perspective with the agents in question, 2. The empirical and scientific approach of sociocultural studies greatly benefits from field data, that is, “this work is not done simply in an office or a library, but literally in the field.”

(Tomson 79, original emphasis), and 3. The nature of sociocultural analysis is such that it puts the agents in the forefront: “given his social origin and the socially constituted properties he derived from it, (…) that writer managed to give a more or less complete and coherent expression to the position-takings inscribed in a potential state within these positions.” (Bourdieu

The Rules of Art 215). As the emphasis in recent theory and literary criticism is to break binaries and slowly distance subjectivism away from a strictly hermetic “canon”, an analysis of the intrahistoria (unstated individual history) of an actor can offer a unique perspective to this particular epoch; a time that is still living and breathing and an opportunity that is no longer applicable to those authors long past.

As a final note, ancillary references will be made to Raymond Williams’ theories on hegemonic and counter hegemonic forces found in his seminal work Marxism and Literature

12 Heterodoxy and orthodoxy have a foundation place in all fields; “the opposition between orthodoxy and heresy which is constitutive of all fields of cultural production.” (Bourdieu Field of Cultural 182). 20

(1977), Louis Althusser’s definition of ideological state apparatuses as established in Lenin and

Philosophy and Other Essays (1971), as well as T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the individual talent”

(1919) and the quintessential and oepidal The Anxiety of Influence (1973) by Harold Bloom.

Furthermore, the relevant texts of the poets in question will be examined through the now classical lens of semiotic structuralism/formalism and inevitably some close readings; the results of these findings will then be linked to the social discourses previously established. In addition, poststructuralist (or postmodern) discursive lenses namely Derrida’s notion of différance and

Foucault’s power struggles (as they become relevant in this study), as well as some mention of reader response theories of Stanley Fish et.al.

1.1. Bourdieu’s Field Theory: Thinking Tools

Pierre Bourdieu's “theory of practice” outlines how the interplay of habitus –the “socially produced self (Lawler 204)– and forms of capital –or individual and external resources– play out in certain fields –“spaces of social struggle” (Shi 55)– to inform sociocultural behavior and cultural production. Through this theoretical model, Bourdieu reinstate the mechanism of social conditions which underlie and allow the creation of both art (and, by extension, the artist). As such, there is no longer an absolute signifier within a text, but rather how the text is understood is thereby fashioned by the social and historical conditions of which it is a product. There is also a non-deterministic human element in action, their link with the material and social world, as

David Swartz sums up: “(...) action is the product of class dispositions intersecting with the dynamics and structure of particular fields. Practices occur when habitus encounters those competitive arenas called fields, and actions reflect the structure of that encounter.” (141) The

21 social concepts and theories established by Bourdieu will be employed to demonstrate the social maneuverings of both the poetry and poets of experience and of difference, insofar as it turns the sociological “game” into a reified, quantifiable, phenomenon. As this study is only a proof of concept, the theory will be streamlined and understood primarily through three principal mutually interdependent “thinking tools”: habitus, field and capital (Grenfell 47).

Habitus

As a complex theoretical concept, habitus has enjoyed thorough academic use, however, it has also entertained misuse. As a point of entry, Bourdieu proposes the following probing statement regarding habitus: “All of my thinking started from this point: how can behavior be regulated without being the product of obedience to rules?” (Bourdieu Logic of Practice 65).

What Bourdieu aims to convey is how social structures and individual agency can be reconciled into one single entity, that is to say, the “social embodied”. Though we feel we are free agents – individuals surpassing some Spinozan determinism– Bourdieu theorizes that we are in fact systemically “structured” by past and present circumstances, and that our social experience, or social being, is our Virgilian guide through the complex forest of socio-cultural relations13 These experiences build dispositions ––that is, tendencies/habitual state/way of being– and thereby create our system of beliefs, practices, perceptions, feelings, and so on. Thus, although intricate socio-structural relations mediate the social being a priori, it is at once an individual agent, one built of its own experiences and devices. These elements are the building blocks of the habitus,

13 In a sense these relations can be thought of as in the American pragmatist theory (Charles Peirce and William James ) where meaning is located in the context of action and therefore individual consciousness is socially located and a social product. 22 what Bourdieu defines as the “property of actors”, and which is linked to their place in a social field.

As one can assume, habitus is not an isolated entity, but rather a puzzle piece in the bourdieusian network of field theory. In order to arrive at the ultimate goal, that is the understanding of the praxis (or why one does what one does), the three main thinking tools must be applied: “One’s practice results from its relations between one’s disposition (habitus) and one’s position in a field (capital), within the current state of play of that social arena (field)”

(Grenfell 60), or as Bourdieu highlights in this logic statement:

[(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice

Breaking this logarithm down into digestible (though basic)parts: a social produced self + individual/external resources + space/arena of social struggle = enacted behavior/actions. Ergo, one’s actions (or practice/praxis – in the case of this investigation, the construction of poetry and social maneuvering of late 20th century Spanish poets) are not solely derived from a predisposed form of habitus, but rather are encountered in relations between these distinct interlocking systems. The meeting of two histories or logics such as field and habitus give rise to practice, or more succinctly:

Habitus focuses on our ways of acting, feeling, thinking, and being. It captures how we

carry within us our history, how we bring this history into our present circumstances, and

how we then make choices to act in certain ways and not others (…) we are engaged in a

continuous process of making history, but not under conditions entirely of our making.

(Maton 51).

Based on the current socio-historic context conjugated with habitus/experience, a range of choices and decisions are automatically forged in the mind14 (in this way, habitus can be likened to a generative structure). These inherited choices lead to the creation of ephemeral dispositions, which are in a constant state of flux within the self, constantly reshaping its identity. The identity that one brings to a particular field creates unique and isotopic distinctions between all the actors that inhabit said field, and mold the relations between each other.

In short, habitus is the link between the social and the individual, whereby members of the same social structure or group share structurally similar positions within that society. The dispositions of the habitus underlie action, and in turn contribute to social structures, constructing a socialized subjectivity. According to social field theory, each “social field of practice (…) can be understood as a competitive game15 or “field of struggles” in which actors strategically improvise in their quest to maximize their positions.” (Maton 53). It is within this field of struggles that habitus becomes the practical logic that each actor brings to the “game”, that is, to the social field of practice; if the habitus of an actor matches the logics of their inhabited field, it is assumed that they “are attuned to the doxa, the unwritten ‘rules of the game’

14 As Bourdieu states, rather jocularly, in regards to the forging of an agent’s “choices”: “Why does one make petty bourgeois choices? Because he has a petty bourgeois habitus!” (Bourdieu An Invitation 129). 15 Bourdieu expresses the logics of the game as inherently containing a series of rules: “You can use the analogy of the game in order to say that a set of people take part in a rule-bound activity, an activity which, without necessarily being the product of obedience of rules, obeys certain regularities (…) Should one talk of a rule? Yes and no. You can do so on condition that you distinguish clearly between rule and regularity. The social game is regulated, it is the locus of certain regularities.” (Bourdieu The Logic 64) 24 underlying practices within that field.” (Maton 53)16 and can then conduct position takings and maneuver throughout the field.

Through the theoretical tool of habitus, bourdieusian theory hopes to dispel the

“scholarly gaze” of distancing or taking a higher view than that of the actors –avoiding that same, aloof, esperpentic gaze that was so attractive to Valle-Inclán–. This in turn allows the execution of empirical analyses that seek to understand the experience of agency through and within social practice and, ultimately, the very cultural world that they inhabit. The individual habitus of the poets elucidated in this investigation are the actors through which the mise-en- scene of the late 20th century Spanish field of poetry will be interpreted.As habitus allows for a point of view that is, in a sense, an intrahistoria of the epoch, perhaps a more intimate point of view can be employed – interviews, blogs, et.al. –. However, as for habitus to function as an explanatory tool, the concept of field must also be understood (and though their logics differ, both structures are inherently homologous).

Fields

The bourdieusian field, or le champ, was originally coined in Bourdieu’s Champ intellectual et projet créateur” (1971) and refers to the infinite variety of “social spaces” that all actors inhabit –often identified as a field of sociocultural battles, struggles and oppositions–.

Much like Kant’s idea of the transcendental mind, Bourdieu imagines a field as a transcendental system paradoxically built and delimited by its own necessity and logic, espousing (in)finite

16 For Bourdieu, doxa is “a set of fundamental beliefs which does not even need to be asserted in the form of an explicit, self-conscious dogma.” (Bourdieu Pascalian Meditations 16), though he also states in The Rules of Art that recognition (illusio) of the game is also a real possibility. 25 possibilities of potentialities within itself. The competitive fields in which the actors create their set of significations, actions (or praxis), etc. are defined, according to Bourdieu, as:

The space of literary or artistic position-takings, i.e. the structured set of the

manifestations of the social agents involved in the field -- literary or artistic works, of

course, but also political acts or pronouncements, manifestos or polemics, etc. -- is

inseparable from the space of literary or artistic positions defined by possession of a

determinate quantity of specific capital (recognition) and, at the same time, by occupation

of a determinate position in the structure of the distribution of this specific capital. The

literary or artistic field is a field of forces, but it is also a field of struggles tending to

transform or conserve this field of forces. (Rules of Art 30).

It is throughout and within these fields of forces that the struggles for capital17 and position takings take place. Fields are akin to the social spaces that the actors are involved in, and resemble an ever-evolving structure whose discourse is concomitantly “the basis for actors’ understanding of their lives” (Maton 51). The social fields are hosts to a “game”18 which is strategically played in order to maintain or improve an agent’s individual or group position: there are rules and order present in the field (doxa) and actors (by extension, even institutions) that take different positions on the field. The conditions in each field vary and thus affect the actions of the actors; they have their own histories, legends, lore and as such constitute a microcosmic bounded arena. Much like the smithsonian self-regulating invisible hand of the market, a field flips and fluctuates between hegemonic and counter hegemonic discourses, and moreover those

17 Bourdieu has defined four forms of capital: symbolic, cultural, economic and social. 18 As a former star rugby player in his youth, Bourdieu would often allegorically liken the game/battle that takes place on these social fields to the happenings of sports matches such as soccer, boxing, rugby, etc. 26 with an advantage are generally able to produce a greater advantage (usually in varying forms of capital). Thus, it can be said that a field is hierarchically structured, wherein “Not everyone is equal, and there are some people who are dominant and who have decision-making power over the ways in which the little social world functions.” (Thompson 68). However, the key is to recognize that fields are constantly evolving –much like habitus, and so structural and hierarchal change happens naturally and inevitably.

For Bourdieu, fields are chiasmatic, or built upon dialectics of opposing forces19 which are hierarchized by capital: “the heteronomous principle, which favours those who dominate the field economically and politically (for example, bourgeois art), and the autonomous principle

(for example, art for art’s sake), which leads its most radical defenders to make of temporal failure a sign of election and of success a sign of compromise with the times.” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 217). As an example, a particular literary field can be divided between two sub-fields –i.e. literature, politics, painting, etc.–, social constructions or distinctions20 (e.g. elite avant garde v. populist art): in the case of this study, the poets of experiencia (Garcia Montero et.al.) and the many faceted poets of diferencia(Federico Gallego Ripoll, et.al.). It is the former that occupies the dominated position21 –that which resides over the subordinate– which is measured by a greater summation of commercial success (or capital) and social notoriety that is enumerated by

“book sales, number of theatrical performances, etc. or honours, appointments, etc.” (Bourdieu

38) –not necessarily solely economic profit–. It should be added that this dominant position

19 In The Rules of Art, Bourdieu often and frankly makes direct and indirect reference to various strands of Hegelian dialectic including even proto-hegelian theories. 20 For a more in-depth analysis on these topics see Bourdieu’s Distinction (1984) and The Weight of the World (1999). 21 In the complex web of social relations, Bourdieu identifies the possibility of groups of actors or agents taking a binary position of the cultural field, including dominant v. dominated and orthodox v. heterodox. 27 generally aligns itself with the field of power22 and is self-propagating within the social game, since given a greater amount of capital, reaching a more advantageous position within the field becomes almost matter-of-fact.

On the parallel plane, those lacking capital –regardless of cause– may be seemingly doomed to a capitalist-darwinian downward decline towards extinction. However, the situation of the so-called subordinate group is not as dire as it may appear, as they have the capability to create unique discourses in the voids of the dominant hegemony or general public; Bourdieu describes in the following example as the degree of specific consecration which “favours artists

(etc.) who are known and recognized by their peers and only by them (at least in the initial phase of their enterprise) and who owe their prestige, at least negatively, to the fact that they make no concessions to the demand of the general public” (Rules of Art 217). Generally, whether dominate or subordinate, a link that can be established with the fields of power is known as the homologies (likenesses) that the collective’s ideology shares with them. The battle for control of the fields of power leads to “field struggles” and eventual shifts in power. It is due to the dynamic structure of fields, of all social relations, that there can be free play –rather than stagnation– between all the unique actors and institutions that inhabit the fields. For Bourdieu a field in this regard is,

“a structured social space, a field of forces, a force field. It contains people who dominate

and people who are dominated. Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate

inside this space, which at the same time becomes a space in which various actors

22 The field of power “consists of multiple social fields such as the economic field, the education field, the field of the arts, bureaucratic and politic fields, and so on.” (Thomson 68) and constitutes “the space of relations of force between agents or between institutions having in common the possession of the capital necessary to occupy the dominant positions in different fields.” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 215). 28

struggle for the transformation or preservation of the field.” (Bourdieu On television

1998).

As stated previously, the poets of experience, in attempts at “position taking” (Bourdieu

31) and seeking cultural hegemony –that is, the creation a new “tradition” to be followed later– have allied themselves with the fields of power relevant to their (poetic) field, including editorials, prize juries, institutions such as universities, politicians, as well as other poets and esteemed literary figures in contemporary Spain. This prioritizes them in the reception of capital

(due to a more socially influential cultural production), which would then not be made as readily available to other fields outside of their own, as “a society has its own special and restricted circle of items (…) associated with the vital socioeconomic prerequisites of the particular group’s existence.” (Voloshinov 21). However, the “other” –poets of difference– take their own position as well, equallyseeking (even subconsciously) to legitimize their work, position, and habitus. The individual actors all act throughout the different, interwoven, levels of a specific hierarchy, each working through their own idiosyncratic “disposition or habitus” (Swedenberg

71) –the mores, milieu, and cultural “baggage” that fashion or structure an individual in concordance with their current circumstances–. It is in terms of inequality and power relations that fields (such as the field of contemporary Spanish poetics) can be decoded and reified

(Crossley 101).

In the case of the poets relevant to this investigation, they enter their respective fields for disparate purposes: for example, the poets of experience aim to self-legitimize their power in the upper echelons of Spanish literary circles using symbolic violence23 (monopoly of sociocultural

23 According to Bourdieu’s theory, the suffering that is caused by social hierarchies and social inequality is a form of symbolic dominance, better known as symbolic violence: “Categorizations make up and order the world and, hence, 29 power, a drive to create more “capital” be it symbolic or otherwise) to maintain and/or perpetuate their canonical position:

The establishment of a canon in the guise of a universally valued cultural inheritance or

patrimony constitutes an act of symbolic violence (…) in that it gains legitimacy by

misrecognizing the underlying power relations which serve, in part, to guarantee the

continued reproduction of the legitimacy of those who produce or defend the canon.

(Johnson 20).

Meanwhile, by contrast, the poets of difference subvert the “normalized” poetic language of experience with their own sets of unique significations, leading to multiple possible outcomes in within the very same field: capsizing the established binary (wherein the periphery brings a potential equality to the center or simply overtakes it), playing within the established social web of hierarchies or doxa –“the social game” (Swedberg 72)–, or breaking from the ethos altogether thus seeking their independence (a hagiographic pariah wandering in the desert). No matter what the case, the field of Spanish poetry at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st is a battlefield brimming with skirmishes that involves all the actors on stage –and conscripts even those unwilling to participate– in an ever changing scenario where, in the end, the internal field struggles define a permanent revolution (Bourdieu 239). Finally, at stake in this game of fields is the capital that, in a Marxist sense, serves as the phantasmal whisper in the ear that drives all actors.

constitute and order people within it. Political struggle is found in efforts to legitimize those systems of classification and categorization, and violence results when we misrecognize as natural those systems of classification that are actually culturally arbitrary and historical. Symbolic violence, is thus a generally unperceived form of violence and, in contract to systems in which force is needed to maintain social hierarchy, is an effective and efficient form of domination.” (Grenfell 159). 30

Capital

As previously inferred, all actors occupy a unique space in the social fields by “virtue of their portfolio of economic and cultural capital” (Crossley 86). The four main forms of capital

Bourdieu posits are: economic (money and assets), cultural (forms of knowledge, taste, aesthetic and cultural preferences, language, narrative, voice), social (affiliations and networks, family, religious and cultural heritage) and symbolic (things which stand for all of the other forms of capital and can be exchanged in other fields) (Thomson 67). The importance of capital in the social arena is of great value, “Capital is valuable because we, collectively, and sometimes in spite ourselves, value it.” (Crossley 86). In the case of literary studies, and of course this particular investigation, the onus hinges primarily on symbolic capital, above all other forms.

Symbolic capital is a sustained “illusion” in a field whereby it is accredited by its own intrinsic principle, a particular disinterested sacred, consecrating principal (Crossley 101) –that is, the value is ultimately abstract, but understood as vital to a specific cultural operation and elaboration–. However, regardless of popular sentiment, symbolic capital is equally as powerful and influential as any other form of capital, “It is in fact impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world unless one reintroduced capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form recognized by economic theory.” (Bourdieu Forms of Capital) These are, in bourdieusian terms, “transubstantiated” forms of economic capital, wherein one particular form is symbolic capital.

Fields are then both the place of production and regulation of symbolic capital, which in turn drive the development, hierarchy, doxa, and interests of a particular field. Those with

31 domination of capital select the cultivated gaze, poise, taste, distinction, canon and moreover the very rules of the game (Crossley 102); whereas those in the subordinate position must play within those established limits or break them altogether to supersede the hegemony. The domination of symbolic capital grants a distinct cultural and social advantage, which certainly varies in differing contexts/discourses. When the value lies on symbolic capital –such is often the case in a poetic field– it can be understood as then having intrinsic worth; “(…) in the field of the arts, for example, cultural capital is presented as selecting the intrinsic value of art works in themselves (“essentialism”) and the capacity of certain gifted individuals (those with

“distinction”) to recognize and appreciate those essential qualities” (Grenfell 103). Therefore, the critic or other objective analyst must not only merit actors in a field of the art simply by the quantity of capital or their social position, but instead look to the essential and distinctive qualities that are intrinsic in their works; regardless of whether they occupy the center of the margins of a particular field.

Clashing over symbolic (abstract) capital within fields creates hierarchies of discrimination, opening up groups of actors to symbolic violence based essentially on hypothetical, speculative and subjective interest which prove that “the legitimations of the system of social domination and subordination constituted within and through these symbolic relations are ultimately based on interest” (Moore 101). Capital is essential for understanding social stratification theory, as cultural capital breeds competition in a generative cycle which leads to cultural distinction and capital accumulation. Thus coming full circle, to unravel the fabric of the Spanish poetic field –praxis– a joint collaboration of habitus, field and capital must be examined (notwithstanding the remainder of Bourdieu’s other key theoretical language).

Bourdieu in The Rules of Art (1996) has mapped steps in the social scientific endeavor of field

32 studies, all of which will be highlighted throughout the varying chapters of this investigation.

Field studies allows one to “see” the constructions of the selected social mechanisms of any given social era: structure of texts as well as structures of literary fields wherein ¨the impetus for change in cultural works (…) resides in the struggles that take place in the corresponding fields of production” (Bourdieu Field of Cultural 183). Michelle Almirón proposes a four part extrapolation of the Rules of Art (1996):

[1] Bourdieu firstly suggests an internal reading of the text where he proposes a character

analysis, with a particular focus on each protagonists' habitus and relationship to the field

of power. [2] Secondly, Bourdieu advises on a reconstruction of the social space that the

author inhabited at the time of production; and thirdly, their position-taking in this social

space. [3] This allows for the construction of the artist’s habitus, and in turn, what

Bourdieu refers to as the objectification of the subject. This objectification is meant to

guard against the sacralising of the author or the work of art. [4] Fourthly, Bourdieu

recommends recreating the literary field at the time the author produced the work and its

relationship with the field of power. (Extrapolating the Rules 1).

In addition to Bourdieu, Even-Zohar’s poly-system can likewise serve as a veritable boon to gain a stronger vantage point in regards to field struggles and the waxing and waning of the poets of difference.

1.2. Even-Zohar: Poly-system

Even-Zohar’s social stratification theory, or poly-system, is a social-semiotic and darwinistic system that has its foundations in the Russian Formalist principles of the 1920s.

Germinating from the writings and ideas of I. Tynianov and, consequently, Roman Jakobson, B.

Eichembaum, and later the Prague School, Even-Zohar has elaborated what Steven Totosy would likely identify as Emmpirische Literaturwissenschaft (Empirical Science of Literature)24, that is, a scientific paradigm for the study of literature in the social praxis to comprehend “how the work is perceived; what values are ascribed to it; in what form it appears to those who experience it aesthetically; what semantic connections it evokes: in what social milieu it exists and in what hierarchical order” (qtd. in Galan 154). –genealogically similar to Jacques Dubois’ L’Institution de la littérature (1978)–. However, concurring with Pozuelo Yvancos, and other similar theoretical approaches, Even-Zohar’s poly-system offers a true methodology and praxis (Pozuelo

Yvancos 78). In short, the poly-system theorizes literature as a structured system of relations between the members (actors) of differing dialectical positions:

“If by ‘system’ one is prepared to understand both the idea of a closed net-of-relations, in

which the members receive their values through their respective oppositions, and the idea

of an open structure consisting of several such concurrent nets-of-relations, then the term

‘system’ is appropriate.” (Even-Zohar Studies 291).

24 A term originally derived from S.J. Schmidt’s eponymous work Emmpirische Literaturwissenschaft (1992). 34

Furthermore, for Even-Zohar, these systems are governed by a set of battling hierarchies, similar to the dominated/subordinate positions in Bourdieu: “un conjunto jerarquizado de sistemas que se interpenetran y combaten entre sí.” (Pozuelo Yvancos 78).

The foundational matrix of the polysystem derives partly from jakobsonian semiotic- linguistics that is transmuted into a literary sociocultural abstraction –wherein the text is no longer the singular focal point of critical study25–. Moreover, polysystem theory has the scientific goal of analyzing historical relations both synchronically (static) and diachronically

(time-succession) in order to unravel the fabric of social relations through the “detection of the laws governing the diversity and complexity of phenomena.” (Even-Zohar Studies 9). Thus, just as is the nature of a sausserian sign, there is not but one static uni-system, rather there exists an infinitely diverse and dynamic poly-system.

Further evoking the jakobsonian semiotic model/scheme of communication and language,

Even-Zohar portrays a specific cultural polysytem (e.g. poetry in contemporary Spain) in the following mode:

INSTITUTION [context]

REPERTOIRE [code]

PRODUCER [addresser] ------[addressee] CONSUMER

MARKET [contact/channel]

PRODUCT [message]

25 Even-Zohar refers to this break as a removal from a “textocentric” mode of analysis, which leaves no room for critical analyses deriving from author, social circumstances, etc. (Studies 34). 35

In this theoretical scenario, a dynamic interdependent system which surrounds and acts betwixt, between and with(in) literature functions as a socio-cultural entity which encompasses producers, editorials, critics, institutions (gubernamental, universitary, etc.), mass media, and so on. There is no a priori hierarchy of importance in these factors, rather it is the sum of each individual factor that allows each of them to function in the first place. The individual mechanics of these forces are detailed throughout Even-Zohar’s work and will be employed when necessary to explain a larger context or discourse.

In sum, the unique function of this system in the context of literary studies is to assume a disinterested, overarching, position that views literature as a historical and social whole, rather than just through the lens of established “elite” or “canon” –that is, a subjectivist a priori approach–. Therefore, if one is to accept the polysystem hypothesis;

Then one must also accept that the historical study of literary poly-systems cannot

confine itself to the so-called "masterpieces," even if some would consider them the only

raison d'être of literary studies in the first place. This kind of elitism cannot be

compatible with literary historiography just as general history can no longer be the life

stories of kings and generals. (Even-Zohar Studies 13).

While it is largely indisputable that canonicity is a primary condition for any system to be recognized as a distinct activity in culture (Even-Zohar Studies 19), without understanding the logics of an entire system, one may be trapped into adopting an already centralized position or subjective icon –the exclusion of a particular object due to hitherto (pre)determined values or taste–. An analysis of only one aspect of the cultural narrative is a naïve, synchronic examination

36 of a singular system and hence an endeavor that should be discarded given the opportunity of analyzing a multi-discursive narrative. It is justly because in the dialectic opposition of

“masterpiece” / “other” (tensions and conflict between hegemony and counter hegemony), that a system’s evolution is sanctified, and thus ensures cultural survival and propagation.

Previously, a synchronic focus on the center has traditionally meant a lack of awareness of the struggles between the center and periphery, and as the periphery is generally understood to run countercurrent to the center, its existence and nature is thought to be quietly relegated to the voids of obscurity:

In practice, the (uni-) system has been identified with the central stratum exclusively (that

is, official culture as manifested inter alia in standard language, canonized literature,

patterns of behavior of the dominating classes), peripheries have been conceived of (if at

all) as categorically extra-systemic. (Even-Zohar Studies 14).

The reality is that sociocultural distinction between texts facilitate and produce literary stratification26 and thereby elicit the necessity for a polysystemic approach; “in literature certain properties become canonized, while others remain non-canonized.” (Even-Zohar Studies 15).

Accordingly, the canonized texts or products become preserved by the cultural community as historical heritage and, inversely, the non-canonized become rejected and forgotten. In a global sense, canonicity does not necessarily indicate “good” or “bad” literature27 but simply those

26 Tensions between the canonized and non-canonized are universal, as it a stratification is ubiquitous in human society, “They are present in every human culture, because a non-stratified human society simply does not exist, not even in Utopia. (…) The same holds true for the structure of society and everything involved in that complex phenomenon.” (Even-Zohar Studies 16). 27 The fact that certain features tend, in certain periods, to cluster around certain statuses does not mean that these features are "essentially" pertinent to some status. (Even-Zohar Studies 15). 37 phenomena that are accepted as legitimate by the dominant circles or power centers, that is, “the group which governs the polysystem that ultimately determines the canonicity of a certain repertoire.” (Even-Zohar Studies 15).

Furthermore, one is given to understand that these pluralistic systems are not equal but rather hierarchized, forcing a permanent struggle of dynamic stratification (what Even-Zohar relates to the center and periphery relations28). This autonomous multi-system schema is in constant centrifugal and centripetal motion, and it is why tensions between strata –social groupings– erupt (such as the gorge between difference and experience). When one strata inevitably beings to dominate the other –“stratification of the polysystem ceaselessly redefines both the center and the periphery” (Ozeri)–, this prompts a radical change in the hierarchy, in a process called conversion; “It is the victory of one stratum over another which makes the change on the diachronic axis (…) phenomena are driven from the center to the periphery while conversely, phenomena may push their way into the center and occupy it.” (Even-Zohar 293).

When a group or individual in the periphery begins to search for a metaphorical Elysium, the place of eternal sanctuary and eternal literary legitimization29, and establish their own voice apart from the center, they are invariably playing into the polysystemic game of give and take30, shaking the brittle foundation of the hierarchy. Thus the question of why and how the process of

28 Note that for Even-Zohar, there is no singular “center” nor “periphery”, “With a polysystem one must not think in terms of one center and one periphery, as several such positions are hypothesized.” (293). This might help to explain the lack of homogeneity present among the poets of difference. 29 “It is also obvious that on a superficial level text producers (writers) struggle for their texts to be recognized and accepted as such. But even for these writers themselves what really matters is that their texts be taken as a manifestation, a successful actualization, of a certain model to be followed. It would be a terrible disappointment for writers to have their particular texts accepted but their literary models rejected. This would mean, from their point of view, the end of their productiveness within literature, an indicator of their lack of influence and efficiency. (Even- Zohar Studies 22). 30 Though the focus here is on one particular center and periphery in a culturally specific literary system, the polysystem abounds with multiple centers and peripheries all circling at different orbits and speeds: “However, with a polysystem one must not think in terms of one center and one periphery, since several such positions are hypothesized. A move may take place, for instance, whereby a certain item (element, function) is transferred from the periphery of one system to the periphery of an adjacent system within the same polysystem, and then may or may not move on to the center of the latter.” (Even-Zohar Studies 14). 38 conversion or transfer takes place becomes central to the comprehension of different polysystems.

However, much like the periphery seeking conversion, those in the primary position, or hegemony, will oppose attempts to dethrone their position; a process that Even-Zohar coins as

“perpetuation” (a process of auto-legitimization and counter-attack in order to maintain cultural territory). Additionally, the one who claims supremacy in their particular literary system is the one “that coheres with the overall development tendencies of the cultural system as a whole”

(Ozeri) and “which emerges as the ‘prize winner’” (Ozeri); that prize is of course, cultural and literary hegemony or even capital. Therefore, it must be stressed that isolation of a particular

“text” or product as the very factor galvanizing movement between systemic strata is an errant dissuasion; it is indeed simply a piece of a larger puzzle:

Thus, facts of "literary life," e.g., literary ideologies, publishing houses, criticism,

literary groups – or any other means for dictating Ejkhenbaum [1929], 1971; Shavit,

1978), function in a more immediate way for the stratification of the PS than other social

"facts." In other words, literary stratification, (or, taste (cf. for the PS, multi-

stratification), does not operate on the level of "texts" alone, nor are texts stratified

exclusively according to features inherent in them. Rather, the constraints imposed upon

the "literary" PS by its various semiotic co-systems contribute their share to the

hierarchical relations governing it.” (Even-Zohar Polysystem 301).

In the case of this particular investigation, the rise of the poetry of experience coincided with the Spanish democratic transitional period, and played a part in the growth and expansion of

39 their poetic ideology and aesthetic. As the thrust of the group began to wane and decay when cultural sensibilities began to shift in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, this in turn witnessed the rise of fragmented and individual voices from across disparate and marginal areas of the Spanish poetic field. The polysystem theory helps to conceptualize literary stratification by demonstrating the heterodox vs. orthodox binary of canonization;

(…) la dialéctica entre ciertas propiedades que llegan a ser canonizadas y otras que

permanecen como no-canonizadas. Por canonizadas se significa aquellas normas y obras

literarias (…) que son aceptadas como legítimas por los grupos dominantes dentro de una

cultura y cuyos productos son preservados por la comunidad como parte de su herencia

histórica. (Pozuelos Yvancos 86).

It is again notable how the strata of the poets of experience will be auto-legitimized and then preserved through canonization31 as “the” esthetic of its moment while difference is shunned by critics as irrelevant32.

On the contrary, it is thanks to the subcultures or sub-stratus (non-canonical products that have no central position) that systems of literature can be forced to evolve. In this sense, if the group of the canonized position does not evolve to meet the expectations of the “people-in-the- culture” (achieving a state of “exhaustion” or “petrification”), they will be inexorably be subject to a revolution, “pushed aside by some other group, which makes its way to the center by canonizing a different repertoire.” (Even-Zohar 296). Repertoire refers here to the “aggregate of

31 According to the Even-Zohar, canonized literature is “supported in all circumstances by either conservatory or novatory elites.” (Studies 297). 32 While headlining the movement of diferencia as a “rebellion” Marta P. de Arenaza aglutinates the strong lack of value of this new poetic ideology by the part of critical machine in Los poetas de la diferencia arremeten (1994). 40 laws and elements (…) that govern the production of texts” (Even-Zohar Studies 18) within each system, shifting and melding diachronically – in this case the repertoire of the poets of experience versus that of difference. Thus, the primary repertoire automatically eschews difference, “When a repertoire is established and all derivative models pertaining to it are constructed in full accordance with what it allows… any deviation will be considered outrageous.” (Even-Zohar Studies 22), whereas the secondary system is inherently different; “the augmentation and restructuration of a repertoire by the introduction of new elements, as a result of which each product is less predictable, are expressions of an innovative repertoire (and system).” (Even-Zohar Studies 22). The rebellion of the “poets of difference”, like countless counter hegemonic movements, is an inevitable reversal in the sociocultural system which these epigones–those who find themselves in the periphery of the canonized– to superimpose themselves onto the superiorstrata. The inversion of the hierarchy is a process known as

“secondarization”33 wherein the primary becomes the secondary and vice versa (Even-Zohar

299).

However, the balance and play of the different canonized (primary) and non-canonized

(secondary) strata is undeniably a healthy asset to the functioning of cultural systems, and is evidenced historically by innumerable pendulum shifts in literature or any other cultural system.

The poets of experience, no doubt unconsciously, necessitate competition from poets of difference in order to keep the poetic system from stagnating, and in this way the rise of the periphery is organic to cultural maintenance and evolution; “The canonized repertoires of any system would very likely stagnate after a certain time if not for competition from non-canonized

33 This process is synthetic and in a way explodes the dogmatic thinking on both sides;“The less familiar, and hence more intimidating, demanding, and loaded with information, becomes more familiar, less intimidating, and so on. Empirically, this seems to be what the overwhelming majority of culture consumers really prefer, and when one desires to control them, this preference will be fully met.” (Even-Zohar Studies 22). 41 challengers, which often threaten to replace them.” (Even-Zohar Studies 16). For fear of petrification, the canonized repertoire attaches itself to the features that are required by the upper social strata to gratify its taste and later to arrest control of the central cultural system;

“canonized repertoire is supported by either conservatory or innovatory elites, and therefore is constrained by those cultural patterns which govern the behavior of the latter.” (Even-Zohar

Studies 18). In effect, this leads those involved with the canonized repertoire to adhere to these features (ideology, aesthetics, etc.) as closely as possible in order to remain dominant. 34

A system is never completely self-sustaining nor is it atemporal. As the social links that prize and elevate the canon over other forms (in this case, the poetry of experience over the difference) begin to break down due to naturally occurring cultural paradigm shifts, so too does the very canon itself. With the canon breaking down, a new age is ushered in and this is where the stake of the other (difference) becomes readily apparent and obvious. It can be understood that on a superficial level text producers (/authors) in any part of the system struggle for their texts to be recognized and accepted as such. But even for these authors themselves, what matters is that their texts be taken as a manifestation, a successful actualization, of a certain model to be followed. According to Even-Zohar, it would be a terrible disappointment for writers to have their particular texts accepted but their literary models rejected, as this would mean –from their point of view– the end of their productiveness within literature (Studies 18). It is this invisible desire for acceptance that sees the theory of polysystem comes full circle to envelope a diachronic and hierarchical understanding of a pluralistic system of literature.

34 This adherence is known as dynamic canonicity, and is employed when a certain literary model manages to establish itself as a productive principle in the system through the latter's repertoire. 42

1.3. Ancillary Theories

The social, cultural and literary maneuverings of both poetic groups in this study, as countless critics have displayed35, are a subjective, interested act, rightly because “intellectual or artistic position-takings are also always semi-conscious strategies in a game in which the conquest of cultural legitimacy and of the concomitant power of legitimate symbolic violence is at stake.” (Bourdieu 137). This semi-conscious act in pursuit of cultural legitimacy can and often does involve the use of what Louis Althusser demarcates as the “State apparatus”. In the case of this study, the main concern would be ideological state apparatus (ISA)36, examples of which include “Literature, the Arts, sports, etc.” (Althusser 144). The function of the ISA is purely in the interest of the ruling classes, through which there is an inculcation and dissemination of the dominant ideology or discourse. For the poets of experience this is a double-sided coin: they work with the State apparatuses to cement their power (influence, etc.), and the ISA work symbiotically with them to meet their own needs. To stage an example that will be elaborated in subsequent chapters, the Spanish PSOE party of the late 20th century vouched for and attended to the poetry of experience (and by extension, its authors) due to how useful their aesthetic style and ideological expressions were for their regime. Critic Jonathan Mayhew, explaining this assertion, states that “in fact, this sort of poetry perfectly embodies the cultural aspirations and policies of the Spanish government during the period in question” (51) due to its accessibility to

“normal” citizens of a newly democratic society (The Twilight 52). Even had this group not

35 Among many who have noted the hegemonic position takings of the poets of experience and difference: Araceli Iravedra, Blanca Andreu, the collective Alicia Bajo Cero, Jonathan Mayhew, and so on. 36 Of course the function of the different ISA’s according to Althusser is for the benefit of not only the state itself, but those in the dominant classes to propagate, maintain and legitimize their power. In this regard, Althusser modernizes and re-tailors Gramsci’s ideas of State and governmental-coercive apparatus found in his communist Quaderni del Carcere or Prison Notebooks. 43 outwardly their access to the ISA (political vis-à-vis literary), those in hegemonic power are –in a Derridean sense– always already expressing themselves through those apparatus.

However, the poets of experience were never able to completely monopolize the poetic scene in contemporary Spain. Due to the very nature of dialectic historicism, seen through the lens of

Raymond Williams, it is that the elite tendencies have an antithesis and thus are in constant battle for their dominant hegemonic ideology:

In practice, that is, hegemony can never be singular. Its internal structures are highly

complex, as can readily be seen in any concrete analysis. Moreover (and this is crucial,

reminding us of the necessary thrust of the concept), it does not just passively exist as a

form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified.

It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, and challenged by pressures not at all its

own. We have then to add to the concept of hegemony the concepts of counter-hegemony

and alternative hegemony, which are real and persistent elements of practice. (emphasis

added, 112-113)

According to Williams, hegemony –which is more akin to a varying social-cultural collective

(108), which is capable of monopoly or canonization– is not a singular function; it does not stand alone as a mythical Robinson Crusoe. There cannot be hegemony without counter-hegemonic forces, just as there cannot be darkness without light and, more importantly, experience without difference. In praxis, the entity known as hegemony is constantly dynamic and changing.

Moreover, hegemony is achieved through an incorporation of three centralized concepts: traditions, formations and institutions (Williams 115-119). Tradition is an element of the past

44 which is selected for use by the hegemony; in this case, the poets of experience incorporate

Jaime Gil de Biedma and the social realism that was center stage in Spain’s post war epoch. This gives a clear indicator of where to find counter and alternative hegemonies, that is, outside and separate from the tendencies of the main hegemony; for example, the poets of difference are known for their transcendentalist and avant-garde styles. Institutions are places where tradition is created (very similar to Althusser’s RSA) and could additionally be the editorial of a printing press that caters to one poetic group or another (ISA). Finally, the formations are “conscious movements and tendencies literary, artistic, philosophical or scientific, which can usually be readily discerned after their formative productions.” (Williams 119). These movements represent the poetic ideologies or fields themselves of said poets and their given affiliations. Furthermore, the literary fields that can be derived from this are classified into dominant, residual and emergent categories (Williams 121), which could be linked to the different poetic groups – difference as in a sense emergent, while experience might be considered dominant depending on the epoch–. The interrelation of all these forces is what Williams analyzes as sociology of culture and is relevant for this case study.

In order to further and finally round out the theoretical thinking tools for this study

(especially from a poetic angle), we will refer to T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and the individual talent

(1919) and Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence (1973). In a quite brief sense, Eliot focuses on what he calls “the historical sense of literature”, which brings to bear the idea that works of art from previous generations congeal to form a “tradition” (perhaps a list of canonical works).

Present or new works that come in the wake of the tradition make room for themselves by altering the past in as much as the past is directing their course in the present. In this sense, one can track present poets, their ideologies and aesthetics, by peering into how they tap into and

45 extrapolate from the previous traditions (or fail to do so); this epistemological view will be keen when etching out the cultural ethos of at least the poets of experience. On the other hand, Bloom posits that poets are stymied by their relationship with forerunner poets and that the plain absorption of their style leads to derivative and comparatively weak poetry. In order to evolve into their own unique literary force (and place their works into a state of immortality), the forerunners must instead infuse a present poet with a psychological anxiety. Under this pressure, the strong, nietzchean, uber-poet will have no choice but to fashion creative, original and new works that will progress the literary dialectic while at the same time “killing” the forerunner.

Bloom divides the production of creative originality into six revisionary ratios, which serve as subconscious strategies for the poet and a theory of poetry in its own right. Similar to the musings of Eliot, using Bloom’s idea can aid in representing the fracture of poets of difference in this epoch.

It will be through the prism that constitutes this sociological approach that the socio-historic and textual information will be collected, analyzed and then transformed into data that will endeavor to represent the other side of the dialectic, the workings of the counter hegemonic fields, and how their texts weigh just as heavily in the overall zeitgeist and production of culture that is Spanish poetic field at the end of the 20th century. The evidence to attempt to prove this hypothesis will be compiled on multiple fronts: historic data starting from the post-Franco transition period through the new poetic movements of the late 2000’s and on (stopping shy of the so-called generation of the new millenium); information regarding the rise and hegemonic establishment of the poets and poetry of experience; information on the (symbolic) marginalization and counter hegemony of the poets and poetry of difference; the diverse esthetic ideologies and styles of the poets of difference; and an in-depth analysis of the texts of the two

46 analyzed authors (Federico Gallego Ripoll, Juan Carlos Mestre ) and how they are positioned within the contemporary Spanish literary field.

2. Poetry of Experience: Rise to Literary Hegemony

I mean to enjoy in my innermost being all that is offered to mankind, to seize the highest and the lowest, to mix all kinds of good and evil, and thus expand my Self till it includes the spirit of all men.

– Goethe Faust (1808)

2.1 From La otra sentimentalidad to Cultural Prominence

“Esta es, sin duda, la poética que cuenta hoy con más cultivadores en la lírica española. Es

también la corriente que más claramente ha roto con la promoción anterior al apostar por la

historicidad y temporalidad de la poesía, reivindicar la cotidianidad y reevaluar la métrica

tradicional y la concepción del poema como discurso memorable en busca de un público más

amplio para la poesía.” (García-Posada qtd. in Sobre la poesía).

What Miguel García-Posada is alluding to is the aesthetic and ideology37 of a key poetic group in contemporary Spanish history commonly referred to as “the poetry of experience” and whose purported goal was “to achieve official status as a literary “generation” (Mayhew Twilight 58).

However, before the poetry of experience would achieve any official recognition or status as a literary generation, and what that mode of centralization implies for this investigation, one must initially look to their period of germination, growth, stability and fall from grace. A suitable

37 Althusser in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1970) constitutes ideology as: “the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group.” (157) 48 starting point can be considered in 1982, which witnessed the redaction and ratification of the literary and poetic manifesto La otra sentimentalidad (“The other sentimentality") by a group of poets based in Granada. Led by Luis García Montero, the manifesto introduced a new poetic- aesthetic movement which was founded on an experiential realism (both intimate and relativistic) and where individual verses became the direct confessions of the subject-poet. García Montero proposed a tripartite approach for this type of poetry: utility, normalcy and traditional aesthetics.

The elaboration of these characteristics would, according to Montero, appeal to the general public:

“Si queremos que la gente se siente interesada por la poesía, es necesario que la poesía

diga cosas, maneje signos, nombre realidades capaces de interesar a la gente, es decir,

que le hable de sus experiencias posibles y de sus preocupaciones.” (Confesiones 236).

Under the auspice of this proposed aesthetic style, the poets of experience managed to sweep away the avant-garde and dominant novísimos (or, largely, the “Generation of 68”) by way of a metaphorical cultural coup which rang with a resounding message: their goal was to conquer the hegemonic center of the Spanish poetic field38. Through ingenious socio-cultural position takings and the acquisition of immanent sources of symbolic capital, the “poets of experience” would quickly establish themselves as the status quo of cultural-poetic production by the mid to late

1980s. History and literary criticism have both proven that the hegemonic campaign of the poets of experience was successful, first by overcoming the previous hierarchy, and then superimposing themselves onto the poetic Parnassus of the late 20th century Spanish literary

38 Only much later would a conclusion be posited that the poets of experience, to some degree, desired “to become canonized as the official Spanish poets of the period.” (Mayhew Twilight 51). 49 field; a reality that has been proven and documented to endure until the rise of counter- hegemonic movements in the twilight of the 21st century.

Originally not known by the moniker of “poetry of experience”, the group’s start was marked by the publication of the above mentioned manifesto La otra sentimentalidad (The other sentimentality) by a group of poets affiliated with the University of Granada, including García

Montero, Javier Egea, Alvaro Salvador and Mariano Maresca. Due to the position takings and maneuvers within the University of Granada’s political and cultural power systems by their mutual mentor Professor Juan Carlos Rodríguez, their manifesto was deemed fit to be included in the impactful collection Los pliegos de barataria (1983), headed then by Antonio Sánchez

Trigueros. Following this fortuitous event, the manifesto of La otra sentimentalidad quickly gained notoriety and was subsequently published in the highly influential newspaper El país on

January 8th, 1983; an act that quickly transformed La otra sentimentalidad into a cultural label

(Morante 26) and catapulted its poets into favor within the public and academic spheres of influence. This social dissemination would quickly catch the probing eyes of the Spanish literaly critics, chiefly Aurora de Albornoz, Emilio Miró and Enrique Molina Campos, who not only publish favorable articles on the fledgling group but also edit the first anthology which would first dub them “una nueva generación” (Sartor 41).

What Luis García Montero et.al. propose in La otra sentimentalidad is a kind of romantic neo-confessionalism and intimate sentimentality39, formulated through an evocation of the immortal becquerian verses from Rima XXI: “¿Y tú me lo preguntas? Poesía soy yo.” (“And you

39 According to Geis, the poets of La otra sentimentalidad (later known as the poets of experience) are interested in the literary and aesthetic ruptures and rebellions of the Romantics and Modernists, since these broke with the logocentrism of religion, philosophy and other dogmatic ideologies, opening the way for them to be freely expressive of “their own feelings and experiences through which they leave their personal mark on the the cultural tradition that they inherited. Personal emotions and experiences now fill the void that in the past was occupied by transcendental truths. "(699). 50 are to ask me? I am poetry.”) (Montero La otra sentimentalidad 7). In consequence of this evocation, the manifesto is a call to arms for an aesthetic of experiential realism, intimate and relativistic, where the verses function as a “confesión directa de los agobiados sentimientos, expresión literal de las esencias más ocultas del sujeto.” (Montero La otra sentimentalidad 7).

García Montero and his poetic affiliates aimed to created “another” sentimentality (that is: new, different, revolutionary, etc.) which they expressed to be a unique approach to the Spanish poetic tradition of Garcilaso40 through Gil de Biedma. In this case, echoing certain tendencies of this forerunner poetry, the poetry of La otra sentimentalidad would be the setting for the poetic “I” – a poet’s personal avatar or metaphorical doppleganger;

Romper la identificación con la sensibilidad que hemos heredado significa también participar

en el intento de construir una sentimentalidad distinta, libre de prejuicios, exterior a la

disciplina burguesa de la vida. (…) Porque el futuro no está en los trajes espaciales ni en los

milagros mágicos de la ficción científica, sino en la fórmula que acabe con nuestras propias

miserias. Este cansado mundo finisecular necesita otra sentimentalidad distinta con la que

abordar la vida. Y en este sentido la ternura puede ser también una forma de rebeldía.

(Montero La otra sentimentalidad 8). 41

40 In La otra sentimentalidad, the poets of experience identify Garcilaso de la Vega as the first Spanish poet in their tradition: “Dentro de la literatura española fue Garcilaso el primero que hizo de su intimidad una aventura definitiva.” (7). 41 Some time later, in a 1997 interview entitled “Una poética para seres normales” (“A poetic for regular individuals”), García Montero recounts the ideology of his burgeoning poetic sensibility: “Es y fue una meditación sobre la poesía realizada por un grupo de poetas unidos por la militancia antifranquista, la formación intelectual marxista y el gusto por una poesía que equilibrara la individualidad y la realidad. Las opiniones de Machado sobre la sentimentalidad, tan cercanas al carácter ideológico de la intimidad, nos permitieron buscar el compromiso histórico sin renunciar al conocimiento de nuestra sentimentalidad en la tradición algunos poetas del 27 y de la posguerra.” (qtd. Morante 23-24). 51

In the wake of La otra sentimentalidad, several other key manifestos showcase an expression of this “new” or “derivative” poetic aesthetic of realist intimacy, among them Alvaro

Salvador’s treatise De la nueva sentimentalidad a la otra sentimentalidad (“From the other new sentimentality sentimentality”) (1983) and the poética inscribed within the verses of Javier Egea.

In his text, Salvador alludes to the literary tradition of Antonio Machado –who is also briefly in

Montero’s La otra sentimentalidad– and the discourse of “sentiment” or “feeling” that is pronounced by Machado’s apocryphal author, Juan de Mairena. In this context, the sentiment- signifiers expressed by the poet are in a constant state flux, differing from age to age, but are always invariably tied to a particular historical moment in space-time that is reflected through their works; “los sentimientos como algo “históricamente fechado”, es decir, los sentimientos como producto de un horizonte ideológico determinado." (Egea 21). Echoing the sevillian poet,

Salvador constructs an extensive list of influences and intertextualities that purportedly saturate the poetry of the other sentimentality: the theories of Freud, Bertolt Brecht and Antonio Gramsci and the poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rafael Alberti, Cesare Pavese and Jaime Gil de Biedma.

Around the same time, Javier Egea authored a sonnet entitled “Poética”, which begins with an epigraph by Juan Ramón Jiménez and then quickly becomes an introduction and mouthpiece manifesto to the artistic endeavors of the group know by their “other” sentimentality: “Porque a pesar de todo nos hicimos amigos / y me mantengo firme gracias a ti, poesía, / pequeño pueblo en armas contra la soledad.” (Egea 70). In the same year, Egea also published Paseo de los

Tristes (1982) in which his poem “Otro romanticismo" once again bastioned “las ideas de la otra sentimentalidad” (Aguilera 812).

Similarly to how the so-called generation of ‘27 pay homage to Luis de Góngora, and the generation of ‘98 to Mariano José de Larra, the poets of the other sentimentality tribute their own

52 precursor poet: Rafael Alberti. Having returned from exile only a few years prior in the late

1970s, it is Alberti (who by this point was already revered and “canonical” in some Spanish literary circles) who directs the young poets from Granada towards the recovery and reengagement of realism and social experience that they would come to share with the “poetas de medio siglo”, including: Jaime Gil de Biedma, Claudio Rodríguez, Francisco Brines, Gabriel

Ferrater, José Ángel Valente and Ángel González. The poets of this list “tended to merge biography and poetry” (Gies 698) –in this way coinciding with the ideas laid out in the manifesto of the other sentimentality–, a trait especially evident in the poetry of Gil de Biedma, among others. Another commonality these preceding poets share is their admiration of the romantic and modernist British poets who later were to form part of a study of Robert Langbaum entitled the

Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition (1957) (Gies

698).

According to Mayhew (The Twilight 34), Pérez Parejo (El monólogo dramático)42, and The

Cambridge History of Spanish Literature (2004), the now iconic title of “poetry of experience” is applied to the poetry of the other sentimentality a posteriori. The main reason for this nominal metamorphosis from la otra sentimentalidad to the poetry of experience is due to a critical link that thematically and aesthetically ties the poetry of experience to the very same romantic and post-romantic English poetry that Langbaum details in the Poetry of Experience43; i.e. the

42 It should be noted here that the nickname “poetry of experience” does not signify that this is the only other poetic group that has been able to employ the concept of the dramatic monologue that was so common place in the English poetry of experience, in fact, the novísimos and even some of the poets of the generation of 1950’s also successfully applied that same concept to their verses: “Desde luego, el uso de esa simulación ficticia que el monólogo dramático en la lírica no es un hallazgo de esta generación.” (Pérez Parejo). 43 It has also been written that, as José Luis Bellón Aguilera traces in Todo modo: Hechos y palabras en la poesía de la experiencia (2007), the original group that comprised the La otra sentimentalidad officially dismantled in 1985. Following this break, the members rallied themselves around the new idea of their verses as embodying the “poetry of experience” that was portrayed in the work of Langbaum and, in turn, made a decision to leave behind the unnecessarily abstract poetic devices that had been detailed in their original 1982 manifesto. According to Aguilera, 53 application of the rhetorical device or literary trope known as the dramatic monologue in which the “I” poet –lyrical voice or poetic speaker– expresses an experiential immediacy in the stead of analytical reflection (in the original context, the rupture of enlightenment empiricism into romanticist sentimentality). More precisely, the stylistic technique that Langbaum elucidates through this Victorian English poetry relies on the creation of a “character” (herein objective correlate) that is transubstantiated from fiction or history and functions as the lyrical subject –

“I”– within the structure of the poem. It is through this created/“fictional” character that the author is, in a Freudian sense, able to sublimate and express their experiences, emotions or desires through linguistic signs; “es decir, una instancia o entidad distinta del autor (situación, objeto o persona) que hable en 1ª persona.” (Pérez Parejo). Langbaum entitles this character as the "historical analog" (a poet-simulacrum) through which the poet’s expression of thoughts/feelings are dramatized and dedramatized44 (Pérez Parejo), in this way also doubling as a tool of literary distancing. By employing the historical analog in their unique modern poetic social context and realist mode of expression, the goal of the poets of experience/other sentimentality can be accomplished: that is, a “novel” way of expressing the intimate sentimentality of the objective correlate throughout poetic verse (a lofty goal that is not always thoroughly achieved).

In order to better comprehend how the Spanish poets of experience utilize the dramatic monologue and objective correlate within their texts, even before the explicit involvement of

Langbaum’s theories, one need not look further than the verses of Montero’s early work El

the goal of this evolution was to allow their poetry acquire more symbolic power and thus allowing them to reach new cultural heights in a competitive war for elysium. 44 Pérez Parejo explains how the poet achieves a dramatization of their emotions, followed by the de-dramatization, thereby eluding the pathos of the “I” subject: “dramatizar en cuanto que se trasladan los sentimientos a las tablas de la ficción, al escenario de un personaje; desdramatizar en el sentido de que, al no aparecer el yo patético (de pathos), se atenúa la identificación con el autor y con ello se rebaja la tensión, los escrúpulos y hasta el morbo para pasar a tener la posibilidad de generar asombrosas connotaciones.” (Pérez Parejo). 54 jardín extranjero (1983). The poems of El jardín rather unknowingly incorporate the “yo ficcional” (Morante 23) of the historic-fictive objective correlate; the metamorphosis of authorial voice to a first person fictional character is allegedly made apparent from verse to verse (Pérez

Parejo). Beginning opening poem El arte militar, the militant father figure reminds the lyrical “I” about the hardships endured during the Franco regime; in “Paseo marítimo”, the child's eyes serve as a direct witness to the postwar Granada of a young poet, full of evocative Proustian memories (sounds, smells, etc.); in “Sonata triste para la luna de Granada” the objective correlative comes in the form of the symbolist poet Paul Verlaine who, according to the caption, chants about the loneliness and poverty of the eponymous city in decades past; and finally, in the series of poems entitled A Federico con unas violetas, the historical analog is the vanguardista poet Federico García Lorca, through which the lyrical voice transmutes its own emotions and frustrations (by way of an uncannily resonant trip to New York, time at a student residence in

Madrid, etc.). However, it is surprisingly difficult to corral a distinct or verifiable objective correlate and its relative function within the operating systems of the poetry of experience, because if the creator does not take apt precautions, the autobiographical character in situ can be paradoxically situated in opposition to the intended analog/“other”. This is a common occurance in the poetry of experience –“el sujeto lírico de la ´Poesía de la experiencia´ parece establecer de nuevo un pacto autobiográfico con el autor, precisamente de lo que se aleja el monólogo dramático.” (Pérez Pajero)–, and punctuates the inspired upheaval of the aesthetic tradition portrayed by Langbuam (thus, another sentimentality45).

45 As García Montero states in the manifesto of La otra sentimentalidad the goal of a new or renewed poetic aesthetic of exvery day life: “Es necesario inventarla, volverla a conformar en la memoria. [...] Romper la identificación con la sensibilidad que hemos heredado significa también participar en el intento de construir una sentimentalidad distinta, libre de prejuicios, exterior a la disciplina burguesa de la vida. [...] Y no importa que los poemas sean de tema político, personal o erótico, si la política, la subjetividad o el erotismo se piensan de forma diferente. [...] Este cansado mundo finisecular necesita otra sentimentalidad distinta con la que abordar la vida.” (emphasis added, 7). 55

The Spanish “poetry of experience” has some generally agreed upon characteristics that can be recomposed from analyzing a cross section of its generative poetry: 1. Sharing of quotidian, slice-of-life experiences, 2. Addressing self-referential emotions through the vessel of the lyrical

“I”, 3. Reflecting on and demonstrating fragments of a personal biography (either real or fictional), and 4. Enveloping their verses in the realistic aesthetic of poets of the generation of the

1950s and before. Other features and general characteristics shared by the poets of experience

(although it is unrealistic to assume that these can serve for all poets under their flag, in every possible historical moment), has been agglutinated by Julia Barella: return to classical meters and rhyme, the rehabilitation of the epic, the introduction of humor, irony, parody, and the choice of the urban space and urban issues as sources of inspiration (17). Additionally, María Paz Moreno highlights other features: a return to the anecdote, the use of simple/vernacular language and an understanding of the poet as a “persona normal” (76). This poetry of tradition, of realism, and of quotidian “normalcy”,

(…) implicará una vuelta sobre patrones métricos y estróficos tradicionales, sobre formas

fijas que enlazan con la poesía de posguerra y la del 50, y que permitirían establecer que la

tradición se aborde desde la intertextualidad (…) la complicidad lectora, la apelación a la

cotidianeidad, la escenificación urbana, la coloquialidad, etcetera, irían delimitando una

poética sobre la cual la sociedad de consumo tendría tanta influencia. (Siles 161).

The end result is that the poets of experience expose their individual habitus into the creation and production of poetry, evidenced here in a few example verses; “¡Bienvenido / calor entre las

56 sábanas / conocida presencia en duermevela / cuerpo de algunos días suficientes!” (Montero Las flores del frío 78).

One of Montero’s later works, Habitaciones separadas (1994), and can serve as a barometer and highlight a portion of the previously prescribed aesthetic tendencies of the poetry of experience. Especially evident in the individual poem “Tienda de muebles y Mujeres”, is the presentation of a biographical ontology that is made possible by the lyrical “I”, as in the verses,

“Me conmueve el recuerdo / de tu piel blanca y triste” (Montero 198). Coincidentally, the lyrical

“I” is also the unsung protagonist throughout many of the poems, demonstrated mainly by the use of personal pronouns. From a structural perspective, there is present the omnipresent fictional character (objective correlate) who acts as a voyager from a Homeric epic (a pseudo-

Ulysses) within the interwoven narrative framework of the entire work. Moreover, there is a premeditated or preordained lack of esoteric or obscure lexicon and, instead, everyday language permeates the poems; –“Alguien abre la puerta. / Los niños corren y desaparecen.” (Montero

187)–. According to Castro, the entire work is likewise replete with anecdotes and allegories usurped from the realist tradition (177). Urban locales are frequented often and comprise the bulk of the text’s scenographic layer (e.g. two stark examples include Manhattan and New York in the poem Life vest under your seat). Neither the creator nor the lyrical “I” occults their sentiments, as these appear in full force and range from melancholy –“Nos duele envejecer”

(García Montero 187)–, to happiness–“y puedo imaginarme / mi libertad, las costas del

Cantábrico, / los pasos que se alargan en la playa / o la conversación de dos amigos. ” (García

Montero 204)–, and even denote a personal angst –“¿Qué pensarán de mí?” (García Montero

201)–. The primordial essence of the poems in Habitaciones qualitatively express fundamentally universal experiences (Mujeres, Los viajes, etc.) in order to finally involve and appeal to the

57 collective consciousness of the common reader, or, “la experiencia colectiva de cualquier lector”

(Castro 177).

These aesthetic characteristics, –demonstrated by the works of Montero and his followers–, are replete in the poems of La otra sentimentalidad/poetry of experience as it was developed and expanded in the Spanish lyrical tradition of the end of 20th century. However, in a bloomian fashion, the poetry of experience is steeped in the historical, literary and social discourse that precedes it, as it most certainly did not appear in a space-time vacuum. Historically and chronologically, the poetry of experience is diachronically situated as superseding the so-called

Novísimos movement which flourished in 1960s and 1970s, and whose poets are gathered in the controversial anthology titled Nueve novísimos poetas españoles (1970) by José María Castellet.

The poetry of the novísimos surges to life as a cultural product of the last years of Franco's regime and lasts through Spain’s democratic transition period of the 1970s. Their rise to popularity is due in part to an expanding cultural openness –or aperturismo– that was fulminating during the end of the dictatorship, coupled with a social rebelliousness that became the hallmark of post-dictatorship Spain46. This historic change in national temperament was sufficient to usher in a poetic shift, especially in the Spanish youth of the so-called Generación del 68, “los jóvenes lectores y escritores de entonces se interesaran por una poesía de vanguardia que rompiera con las presiones ideológicas que llevaban años determinando los movimientos culturales” (Salas Romo 97). The aesthetics of the novísimos has been critically categorized as a form of dialectic rupture, or antithesis, in opposition to the “exhausted” socio-critical poetry

(Aguilera 797) that had been tempered by the harsh realities of post-civil war Spain but was now, according to the young poets literarily automatized. The poetry of the novísimos therefore

46 Art, and literature to be sure, is rife with a discursive agency that has the power to affect a given historical context but, reciprocally, is likewise affected by this same history as well. In regards to the novísimos as somehow a product of their space and times, the Hegelian expression that art is the storehouse of culture seems aptly fit. 58 characterizes a movement towards a linguistic and ideological renewal of literary epistemology47, alongside a new sociocultural era. As the poets of experience would overturn the established poetic hegemony of the 1980s and 1990s, so too did the novísimos inadvertently capitalize on the sociocultural turmoil and upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s to tip the balance of symbolic power in their favor. As Bourdieu states,

It remains true that cultural producers may use the power conferred to them, above all in

periods of crisis, by their capacity to produce a systematic and critical representation of the

social world in order to mobilize the virtual force of the dominated and to help to subvert the

established order in the field of power (Bourdieu Rules of Art 252).

However, although time has demonstrated that the novísimos were an influential and, a posteriori, a cultural relevant literary force in a historical sense, for the mass Spanish public that was still accustomed to the previous socio-realist aesthetic, the avant garde poetic approach of the novísimo poets fell far from the mark in regards to accommodating a more generalized sensibility. According to Barella, conservative critics and the general public alike found the brazen uniqueness of the novísimos to be negative on multiple accounts: it was seen a simpleminded “game” of a non-erudite youth, the loss of a centralized identity of the poet figure

(a staple of the realist tradition) was seen as a clumsy and vulgar characteristic, and they rejected the sometimes obscure referencing of pop-culture icons and iconography –“arremetieron contra la difícil poesía de unos jóvenes esteticistas que incluían en largas enumeraciones referencias a

47 According to Julia Barella, the novísimos defied the established horizon of expectations of the era, breaking metaphorical barriers by revindicating “el decadentismo, el esteticismo, el lujoso léxico modernista, el estilo de la vanguardia, el malditismo…” (13) and “sin duda, la propuesta novísima regeneró el ambiente literario español [y] sirvieron de ayuda y de estímulo a muchos jóvenes que entonces empezaban.” (13) 59 unos mundos culturales que ellos desconocían.” (14)–. In retrospect, the poets of experience,

Luis García Montero and Felipe Benítez Reyes, would go on to write about the “sacralization” of the poetic art by the novísimos. History has shown that literature (or science, art, philosophy, etc.) removed from conventional confines is usually met with a furrowed brow, as it can exert a socially subversive influence, and poetry of the novísimos is perhaps no exception.

While it has been documented that the novísimos flourished and enjoyed cultural recognition even despite the critical backlash they received, by the 1970s and into the 1980s, there begins a paradigmatic shift away from the rupturistic tendencies of the novísimos –even some of the more extreme members (d)evolve into certain classical styles–. The aesthetic pendulum returns back to the veneration and continuity of the prior poetic generation (revolving around José Ángel

Valente, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Francisco Brines, Ángel González, etc.) and a new fondness develops for their more intimate and experiential poetic leit motifs which echoed the changing national Spanish zeitgeist or climate of the 1980s:

A finales de los setenta, la vuelta a la tradición es ya un hecho innegable. El repliegue

hacia la intimidad y la revalorización de la memoria y de los sentimientos convierten a la

poesía en un modo privilegiado de rescatar el instante, (…) experiencia biográfica y

experiencia de cultura, serían inseparables en la poesía de los ochenta. En ese sentido sí

puede hablarse de una relativa continuidad. (Millán 64-65).

The change in the aesthetic atmospheric composition of the Spanish zeitgeist of the 1980s

(the establishment of a new democratic era), explains the canonical displacement that the current of the novísimos suffered at the hands of the poetry of experience and its potent heralds;

“explicaba la caída novísima por la dispersión e incomprensión de sus propuestas y por la fuerza que había adquirido el retorno al clacisismo gracias a autores como Villena o Luis Alberto de

Cuenca, apoyándose en el desplazamiento canónico sugerido por éste último.” (Méndez 164).

While the poets of experience, such as those mentioned by Méndez, are not the sole poetic group or aesthetic to arise from the ashes of a “postnovísimo” literary field, they did manage to fill a subconscious yearning in the Spanish poetic discourse that yearned for an expression of the realistic, biographical, experiential and “every day” being. However, there was a considerable hurdle to overcome, in that the poetry of the “other sentimentality” –in its nascense at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s– were located in the literary and cultural periphery; or what Even-

Zohar denotes as the status of epigones. Indeed, the novísimos (alongside their recognizable

“culturalismo” style) occupied then the role of hegemony, piqued the Spanish literary imagination, and thus were able to absorb most of the symbolic capital in the field; “eran el polo dominante del campo literario hispánico.” (Aguilera 801). Therefore the subconscious ancillary project of the “other sentimentality”, as headed by Luis García Montero and his contemporaries, was, in a sense, a Marxist revolution against the established “elite” poetry, an attempt to uproot the center and depose the metaphorical antecedent. Their only weapon of war was the construction of a poetic aesthetic and ideology that would pierce the very heart of the novísimos and other avant-garde movements, and come out victorious through its own merit and sociocultural allegiances with the fields of power.

Theirs was an attempt at a cultural and literary coup –“La otra sentimentalidad (…) rezuma, casi intempestivamente, el aroma de las vanguardias: un grupo de escritores provocateurs cuestionan el polo dominante del campo literario.” (Aguilera 803)– with the clear and expressed intention of usurping the dominant position by arresting it from the vanguardias: “el mensaje, el

61 comunicado, deja claro en su totalidad que el objetivo de su práctica poética es la ideología dominante.” (Aguilera 804). This goal of domination vs. extinction dichotomy was instinctually evident and points at Darwinian literary evolution in practice, as achieving dominance leads to the stability of an intended system; “It is only such stable systems which manage to survive, while others simply perish.” (Even-Zohar Polysystem 26). What followed was a carnivalesque literary rupture, wherein there was not an anti-systemic or avant-garde art form that sought to renew a centralized and stagnant discourse, but rather the reintroduction and rebirth of a classic, realist and bourgeois tradition48, the return to “aesthetic conservatism in contemporary Spanish poetry” (Mayhew Twilight 17).

2.2 Legitimation, Symbolic Violence and the appearance of the other

Benefitting from over two decades of retrospection, the critics and those institutions that compose histories of Spanish literature have demonstrated that the ideological campaign of dominance from the camp of the poetry of experience had been met with staggering success.

Since in the 1980s, 1990s and even into the 2000s, the affiliates of the poetry of experience climb to the summit of the poetic Parnassus; the metaphorical place of cultural hegemony of the literary-poetic field of the twilight of the 20th century49. However, ascending the ladder of literary and cultural hierarchy into canonicity50 is never an easy feat, as it has required well

48 Following Méndez, “El proceso se ha descrito como un desplazamiento del vanguardismo por el clasicismo.” (161). 49 Mayhew adds to this discussion: “the attempt to establish the “poetry of experience” as the “dominant” or “hegemonic” tendency of the 1980s and beyond has been successful: most anthologies devoted to the period are dominated by this school.” (58). 50 In a global sense, canonicity does not necessarily indicate “good” or “bad” literature but simply are those phenomena that are accepted as legitimate by the dominant circles, that is, “the group which governs the polysystem that ultimately determines the canonicity of a certain repertoire.” (Even-Zohar Studies 15). This investigation does 62 thought out and numerous position takings (up to and including articulations at the national level) and the (re)acquisition of the limited sources of symbolic capital (in the form of anthologies, literary prizes, etc.); what happened can be seen as a conquest of Raymond

William’s tripartite functions of traditions, formations and institutions. As was previously stated, the poets of experience had the luxury of an initial link with the university apparatus (a powerful and influential ISA) which would legitimize their work from the outset; according to Aguilar, the

Spanish university system during the apogee of the poets of experience was the “centro productor de legitimación cultural, en relación directa con las dinámicas de canonización de las obras literarias.” (807).

It was through the influence of the professors at the University of Granada that the fledgling group managed to spread their manifesto in a newspaper of great importance (El país) and, in consequence, throughout Spain (an option that is mostly improbable for a grassroots or independent poetic group)51. Coupled with a well-known, appreciated realist aesthetic and their bond with renowned poets of previous generations, the poets of experience were able to attract overwhelmingly positive, and immediate, popular and critical attention. Now touting a weighty and established literary potency alongside an enticing hegemonic position in the literary field of the 1980s, many talented poets would eventually join their ranks. This act would further bolster their cultural power and would include names such as Carlos Rosales, María Ángeles Mora, Luis

Muñoz, Javier Salvago, Jon Juaristi, and Felipe Benítez Reyes among many other names in

not seek to put a negative or positive qualitative/quantitative rating to poetry, rather the text is to be judged and finally understood by the reader as Stanley Fish and his colleagues propose in the tradition of reader response. 51 Aside from their dissemination through literary prizes and positive criticism, they were equally supported through publicly funded and impactful journals: “revistas “Olvidos de Granada”, “La fábrica del Sur” y “Hélices” o la colección “Maillot amarillo”, todas costeadas con dinero público y herméticamente cerradas a quienes estaban fuera de la oficialidad.” (Palacios Guzmán 3). 63

Spanish poetry that would rise to prominence in part due to their link with the poetry of experience.

Furthermore, García Montero then coins the ontological core of the poetry of experience as a poesía de normalidad (poetry of normalcy) in what perhaps had the additional effect of appealing to a more mainstream audience –no doubt a substantial sector of the consumers of this particular poetic style–, wherein this change would in turn resonate with the soul of the proletariat everyman52 and thus “dar voz en los poemas a los explotados, hablar sobre el sufrimiento producido en nuestras vidas cotidianas por la explotación en la sociedad del mercado y el espectáculo.” (Aguilar 810)53. Combining their discourse of normalcy with the fields of power, lead the poetry of experience towards hegemony, as Mayhew posits: “la poesía de la experiencia ha alcanzado la hegemonía presentando una narración de normalización triunfante en consonancia con la autoimagen de la élite política española” (Poetry, Politics and Power 246-

247). Thus, the poetry of experience became a function of Spanish societal discourse, both integral and conformed: “una poesía no enfrentada a la sociedad, sino integrada en ella, conforme.” (Siles 169). As Bourdieu once again reminds, an affinity with the “general public” is critical to achieving hierarchy and dominance in a specific field:

52 It is vital to recognize that both “everyman” and even the intellectual during the height of the poets of experience was adrift in an atmosphere of stunted growth and change, that would in turn function as a boon to the group’s popularity and literary diffusion: “No son buenos momentos para los intelectuales. Aquel afán por cambiar que mostraron los universitarios en los años 70, deja paso a una juventud universitaria pasiva, resignada y acrítica. Imposible cambiar nada. Como nota predominante impera el escepticismo en todos los aspectos. Son tiempos de masificación de las universidades y de desprestigio general del profesorado. (...). Leyes como la del divorcio, la del aborto, las nuevas orientaciones de la enseñanza con la imposición de la LOGSE, descentran el país y lo que se creían valores de siempre tienden a desmoronarse ante la imposición de una cultura cada vez más desorientadora”. (Guillén 13). 53 García Montero understands the poetry of experience as cultivating a real and objective message that can be decoded by the reader: “se convierte en un territorio de objetividad donde el poeta puede ordenar sus experiencias para entenderlas mejor y para exponérselas al lector. En esta peripecia artística de la objetividad cobran un valor decisivo una elaboración medida del personaje poético y el marco de la experiencia real como temperatura y telón de fondo de los poemas”. (Poeta necesario) 64

According to the principle of external hierarchization of force in the temporally dominant

regions of the field of power (and also in the economic field) - that is, according to the

criterion of temporal success measured by indices of commercial success (such as print runs,

the number of performances of plays, etc.) or social notoriety (such as decorations,

commissions, etc.) pre-eminence belongs to artists (etc.) who are known and recognized by

the ‘general public’. (Bourdieu Rules of Art 217).

It was due to this same poetic link and resonance the poetry of experience held with the general population that gave this group the social clout to enlist (and be enlisted by) various factions of the Spanish government –perhaps one of the most potent fields of power to be allied with–. Under the command of Prime Minister José María Aznar beginning in 199654, the appointment of poets to positions of authority contributed considerable symbolic and economic capital and was a transferable sociocultural and influential asset for the myriad poets of experience. Mayhew highlights one case in particular where two poets of experience were appointed to high office (for reasons up to and including their poetic stances), “Jon Juaristi and

Luis Alberto de Cuenca were appointed to high positions by the Aznar government (…) in fact, this sort of poetry perfectly embodies the cultural aspirations and policies of the Spanish government.” (Mayhew Twilight 51). The government’s (re)adquisition of the realist-normative poetic tradition benefited state stability as a whole, as it was a way to “garantizar la establidad nacional” (Vigon 14)55. The association with these and other similar institutions is where the

54 It has also been argued that even before this, the poetry (and poets) of experience were already in line with the cultural policies of the PSOE government of the 1970s “situating itself as culturally dominant, reflects the cultural policies (and politics) of Felipe González’s PSOE government and, more generally, of the political élite of the transitional period.” (Mayhew Twilight 11). 55 Palacios Guzmán further elaborates the links between the poets of La otra sentimentalidad and the sociocultural molding aspirations of the P.S.O.E. goverment, and how this tremendously benefitted the former:“Mientras tanto, en España el P.S.O.E. ha llegado al poder e intenta crear una cultura a su medida: pequeñoburguesa, realista, urbana y 65 poets of experience were able to absorb generous amounts of symbolic power and then exercise that power in order to cement their centralization. However, this was only a part of their position takings and movements of self-fashioning during the 1980s and 1990s, which would also include the acquisition of literary prizes, editorial relations, unofficial and official recommendations, use of public funds for editing, influencing prize juries, and host of other methods of auto- legitimation (after all, perpetuation denotes stabilization and new conservatism):

Entiendo que este sector de la poesía española presenta concordancia con las formas de

poder del posfranquismo, ya sean éstas de corte socialdemócrata, escoradamente centrista

o llanamente derechista. El caso es que los premios oficiales y oficiosos, los medios de

comunicación, las editoriales relacionadas con ministerios y corporaciones, los libros de

texto “recomendables” y los editados con dinero público, los críticos que quieren “hacer

carrera” y en sus poses, los propios jefes de gobierno, es decir, la práctica totalidad de los

poderes capaces de suscitar popularidad, consumo y, en modesta medida, atributos de

una especie de star-system, suelen preferir a estos poetas “inteligibles” que yo considero

minirrealistas. (Gamoneda qtd. in Mayhew 26–27)

After having successfully established themselves as the de facto statu quo in the field of poetry by the early 1990s, the poets of experience begin a campaign (whether consciously or otherwise) to either suppress or ignore the sub-altern and marginalized poetic voices that could

con una barniz de izquierdas. Por primera vez entra el dinero a raudales en la vida literaria española. El felipismo se encarga de administrar las subvenciones, los premios, las apariciones en televisión…, de una manera partidista e injusta. Y se produce una gran escisión en la literatura española contemporánea. Por una parte se encuentran los oficiales, los mimados por el régimen; por el otro, los marginados. Entre los primeros, están los autores de “La Nueva Sentimentalidad” (Palacios Guzmán 3) 66 potentially interfere with their reign56: “todo lo que se sitúe en sus márgenes, fuera de esta normalidad poética (al igual que lo que se sitúe fuera de la normalidad política) sería ignorado”

(Crespo Massieu 71). This is what Derrida purports when he delineates the center as limiting the free play of the other sectors within a noted structure (in this case, the poetic field), “The function of this center was not only to orient (…) but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the freeplay of the structure.”

(Structure, Sign, and Play 1). In the discourse of late 20th century Spansh poetry, centralizing discourse of the poetry of experience can be noted as contrasting and constricting a periphery that necessitated its own freedom of poetic expression. As this particular field would be deeply steeped in the “official” or “canonical” ideology of the poetry of experience, their most iconic poets would be hoisted into the (inter)national Spanish poetic canon, thereby diffusing their works and aesthetic influence even further. Thus, much like the lord-peasant dichotomy of the medieval era, the ramifications of this discourse leads to the inevitable invisibility and repression of the other:

The ideology of an official culture as the only acceptable one in a given society has

resulted in massive cultural compulsion affecting whole nations through a centralized

educational system and making it impossible even for students of culture to observe and

appreciate the role of the dynamic tensions which operate within the culture for its

efficient maintenance. (Even-Zohar Studies 16).

56 Even-Zohar posits a concomitant theory, “When a repertoire is established and all derivative models pertaining to it are constructed in full accordance with what it allows (…) any deviation will be considered outrageous.” (Polysystem 21). In addition, the repression of innovation is a defense mechanism in which those in power will “not admit elements which are likely to endanger its dominance in the system.” (22). However, the outcome of this strategy is a double edged sword, as it leads a direct path to a group’s eventual secondarization and petrification, an icarian fall from the heavens to the sea. 67

However, as war cannot exist without peace, so then a school of poetry or ideological movement that is dominant or hegemonic cannot be without its opposite, and corollary, binary; this is what

Raymond Williams in Marxism and Literature (1977) refers to as hegemonic and counter- hegemonic discourses. Although it is well documented by contemporary criticism that the poets of experience did in fact realize a canonized position in the Spanish literary field, it is of equal importance to note that they were never able to utterly suppress the voices of the subaltern nor obtain a complete cultural and literary monopoly (after all, such a literary event would be highly improbable to imagine in an industrialized democratic state and an interconnected, globalized, world). Indeed, even during their zenith of power, there (always) already existed a parallel, if underground, literary flow emanating from dissenting voices that opposed, ignored or simply worked in different ways than the hegemony of the poetic field of the late 20th century. After a decade of a strong control of power and capital, a number of these “other” or “different” poets would vehemently denounce or protest against the dominant methods of the poets of experience in their extortion of awards, anthologies, and even their very inception in the literary canon (from their perspective, an imposition on the free forming poetic aesthetic discourses prevalent after the

1970s). Moreover, these different poets were opposed to the realist aesthetic of experience that they alleged lacked an avant-garde sensibility, moral criticism57, was home to an unwelcoming and narcissistic “I” and, moreover, discredited the experimental discourses of poetic others:

57 According to Bagué Quílez, popular sentiment among the poets marginalized by center, stated that the suppresive influence of the poetry of experience´s “normalcy” was ultimately damaging the vitality of the general poetic discourse: “La serpiente intimista y la vista cansada de García Montero se convierten en emblemas de una sociedad que ha olvidado sus orígenes y que ha decidido anestesiar su conciencia rindiéndose al constante trasiego de imágenes que emiten los medios de comunicación” (57) 68

“En efecto, propugnan un lenguaje convencionalmente comprensible, predican la

circunstancialidad y vacuidad de las vanguardias y la inutilidad de la experimentación; se

muestran contrarios a cualquier forma de originalidad o creatividad en el arte (…)

acomodado en la experiencia socialmente armonizada para desacreditar cualquier

discurso distinto (…) tachándolo de “galimatías”, insulto al lector”, etc.” (Suñén La

poesía).

Regardless of the critically objective or subjective take on the aesthetic or ideological qualities of the poetry of experience, what followed was that these alternate discourses took it upon themselves to break down what they understood to be the automatization of the poetic discourse by the 1990s.

One of the most famous (or infamous) cases of an anti-poetry of experience stance is the article “Una reclamación” (2000) by the poet Blanca Andreu, published in El Cultural. Within this text, Andreu writes a scathing vitriol against what she believes to be the utter banality of the aesthetic of experience due, in part, to an overwhelmingly positive critical praise that had been pandered for the hendecasyllabic verse “Tú me llamas, amor, yo cojo un taxi” by García

Montero. Andreu finds the laudation of this verse a parody and almost certainly an absurdity that makes her question the status of the Spanish poetic discourse in the 2000s, and leaves her

“estupefacta del grado de ceguera en que puede incurrir la crítica cuando trata de aupar a alguien

(…) si ese es el mejor verso que se ha escrito en muchos años, la poesía ha muerto para siempre en una conversación de trastienda” (“Una reclamación”)58. Andreu further notes how the hegemonic position of the poets of experience is unfairly propagated and acquires legitimacy by

58 Andreu goes on to say: “me pregunto cómo es posible caer en la simpleza de considerar que la visión de un semáforo y del asfalto pueden constituir experiencia poética”. Eso es vivir en pozo seco, sin saber viajar con la mente y el espacio, que es lo mínimo que debe saber un escritor.” (”Una reclamación”) 69 its continuous links with fields of power, for example, through a parasitic relationship with elite literary critics like Francisco Rico; “en su mayoría pertenecen a la servidumbre del Profesor

Rico” (“Una reclamación”). Andreu is not the first and certainly not the last voice that denounces the hegemony of the poets of experience since, especially in the 90s and the dawn of the new century (and now with the possibility of knowledge of these events a posteriori), alternative critics begin to unravel the controversial and complex polemics that orbit around the poetry of experience and those who are differ from them.

One of the most vocal critics appeared in 1996 as an anti-capitalist, anti-systemic, anti-poetry of experience attack that is mounted by a group of poets-activists known only under the alias

“Colectivo Alicia Bajo Cero”. This collective group took the initiative to gather and publish articles that demonstrated the compromising policies and corrupt trends in the poetry of experience, as evidenced in their landmark work Poesía y poder (1996). Another critic, Araceli

Iravedra, publishes the text Radicales, marginales y heterodoxos en la última poesía española

(contra la poesía de la experiencia) (2006), where she engages in a direct dialogue with the defenses of the poetry of experience erected by Montero, and rejects his integrationist point of view in favor in favor of the renewing voices of marginality. Jonathan Mayhew has written several articles and a book, The Twilight of the Avant-Garde (2009), in which he refutes the conservative atmosphere of contemporary Spanish poetry (alongside an apology to women poets of the same era). Other critical endeavors are relatively scant and scattered, offering varying degrees of complaints (or at least a demonstration of the controversy) through various forms of media, and some examples include: Ángel Luis Prieto de Paula en Entre la disidencia y la asimilación: la poética de la experiencia (2013), Genara Pulido Tirado en “La poesía de la experiencia y la cítrica literaria en algunas antologías: hacia la fijación de un canon poético”

(1999) y María Paz Moreno en “El lugar de la ‘poesía de la experiencia’ en la literatura del siglo

XX: ¿Una posteridad calculada? “ (2000). In addition, many literary anthologies began to be published that elucidated poets and poems from the margins while, concomitantly, rejecting the poetry of the center; some examples include Feroces. Antología de la poesía radical, marginal y heterodoxa (1998) y Voces del extremo (1999).

What remains evident is that the poetic movements that opposed or paralleled the poetry of experience throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s became incredibly diverse, decentralized and fragmented, no doubt a product of the postmodern condition prevalent in continental Spain in the post-dictatorial era. Crespo Massieu in La poesía y los márgenes (2007) identifies a large number of anthologies and poetic texts that did not follow the hegemonic aesthetic (beginning as soon as 1982) and, moreover, identifies the unique currents of the poetry in the peripheries.

Other specific trends that the above mentioned Julia Barella distinguishes include: the successors to the aesthetics of the novísimos (the poets demarcated as Postnovísimos by the anthology of

Luis Antonio de Villena), defenders of decadentism and culturalism; poetry of reflection or poetry of silence that departs from experience into the realm of the mystical and ineffable (poets including Armando López Castro, Amparo Amorós, Julia Castillo); and the recovery of the symbolist and surrealist traditions (poets including Pere Gimferrer, Jorge Urrutia, César Antonio

Molina, Blanca Andreu, Juan Carlos Mestre, etc.) (17). Following critic Juan María Calles, the following may be added as well: followers of the poetic tradition of Cernuda (such as Sánchez

Chamorro); poetry that emulates the juanromaniano or baroque lineage (89); minimalist and conceptismo (poets including first name Ullán, Aníbal Núñez, Felipe Núez) (92). There are also the aesthetic of metapoetry, experimental poetry and pure poetry. Finally, the anthology of

Spanish poetry Poesía española del 90 (2008) by Beatriz Ferrari outlines three general aesthetic

71 trends and ideologies of the 1980s and 1990s – many of which carry over into the 21st century–:

1. Poetry of experience, 2. Poetry of Conscience, and 3. Poetry of Difference. These are but a few small samples of the voice of dissonance that have grown in parallel and evolved from the hegemonic discourse of the poetry called “of the experience”.

The strength of the canon of poetry of experience can be traced through the chronological literary line of the some of their key figures, as Bagué Quílez identifies: Benjamín Prado

(Ecuador. Poesía 1986-2001, 2002), Felipe Benítez Reyes (Rama de niebla. Poesía reunida,

1978-2002, 2003), Vicente Gallego (El sueño verdader. Poesía 1988-2002, 2003), Carlos Marzal

(El corazón perplejo. Poesía reunida, 1978-2004, 2005), Luis Muñoz (Limpiar pescado. Poesía reunida, 2005) y Luis García Motnero (Poesía [1980-2005], 2006) (50). Scarano La figuración realista en la poesía española de las últimas décadas (2002) envisiones the past two decades (and more) as lulled by the siren of realism, a poetry of “declarada vocación realista” (18). However, as made evident by the diachronic examination of their publication, the hegemony and homogeny of the poets and poetry of experience naturally waned by the mid to late 1990s (and eventually tapering off by the dawn of the new millennium). The cultural power void they left behind would slowly become replaced by poetry of individuality and singularity, a recovery of avant-garde literary texts which had been largely silenced and rendered invisible for a period bordering on two decades59.

Since its creation as a manifesto known as La otra sentimentalidad and its growth into the recognizable and populist brand of poesía de la experiencia, the poets of this hegemonic

59 Saldaña reiterates the importance of the rediscovery of the texts silenced by the mechanisms of sociocultural control:“Esa vindicación de la singularidad alienta también el trabajo crítico que algunos estamos llevando a cabo desde hace tiempo, un trabajo centrado en la necesidad de recuperar algo tan simple –pero al parecer tan difícil– como es el latido de los textos literarios, silenciado por ese poderoso instrumento de control social que es el mercado, que supone una pérdida de la individualidad y, por lo tanto, un aumento de los comportamientos acríticos.” (763). 72 aesthetic and ideological movement have had a tremendous impact on the Spanish literary field in the last decades of the 20th century and into the 21st. The poets of experience quickly achieved canonicity and notoriety, but as is the story of all hegemonic powers, evanesce of dominance eventually proves to be the key to its own eventual downfall. It is not as Veselovsky noted but rather Shklovsky’s take on the subject of literary evolution –“The purpose of the new form is not to express new content, but to change an old form which has lost its aesthetic quality” (Theory of

Prose 1)– that will oblige poetic change in an era of new historical and environmental forces.

Difference to experience was already on the horizon in the Spanish poetic field at this particular fin de siècle, and a look at the poets and poetry that made this possible becomes all but necessary.

3. Poetry of Difference: Emergence and Dissonance

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

-W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

3.1. Of Différance and Difference

It is not improbable to imagine a notion of differences between the many poetic traditions in Spanish literary history; indeed, one can trace literary evolution in any culture and bear witness to ponderous but inexorable paradigmatic changes present throughout the ages60. As one

60 As an illustration of this change, Antonio Enrique, in his critical work Fundamentos histórico-literarios para un concepto de “la literatura de la diferencia” (1996), catalogues –as a preamble and preface to the short lived group which was known as the poetry of diferencia– the genealogy of poetic differences throughout the history of Spanish 73 great literary movement rises so then must it fall, perpetually living the aphorism the king is dead, long live the king. Literary change is a symptomatic evolution of differentiation and more so différance, the Derridean notion61 one may be more inclined to employ in order to explain the phenomenon of ever changing and evolving discursivity and meaning: that is, a free play of differing and deferring significations that serve to deconstruct the idea of a perpetual binary hierarchy or a single transcendental center. While an argument will be made that there exists the amoebaes form of a poetry of difference in the recent history of Spanish poetics and that shaped initially as an opposing force to the poetry of experience, the aim here is to not only identify a single, isolated and arbitrary branch of poetry. Rather, it is to use the rupture found in the field of poetry in the 1980s and through the 2000s as a set piece to highlight a greater and deeper culture of individual poetic differences that would eventually become the leit motif in the dawn of the

21st century. This theory will further serve to grant an identity to a poetic movement whose form harbors multiplicity, fragmentation, eclecticism, subversion and a continually difference in aesthetic and ideology and can be found within a uniquely rich sea of fields and habitus found throughout the contemporary Spanish nation.

The “poetry of difference” embodies the logic of difference, a plurality of voices that hail from the margins or periphery –the other–, each within a microstructure in which each author’s idiosincracy and sociocultural essence is poured into the practice of poetry. In many ways, what these contemporary poets embody –their “difference”– is wholly representative of the literature. In the sense of a binary opposition between ideologies and aesthetics, such as romanticism v. realism, Enrique traces differences beginning in the 13th century up through the late 20th. 61 It is mainly throughout the works Structure, Sign and Play (1966) and Différance (1968) that Derrida critiques the notion of a center, a guiding discourse or transcendental signified, and limits the free play within the structure –an invisible boundary– (in this case, poetic literary field). There is an opposition to the structuralist notion of emergence between two defined discourses, in Derridean thought there is no stable binary (hence the undistinguishable différance - différence), where meaning is always deffered. Derrida’s différance is initially a linguistic phenomena, based on sauserrean semiotics, but is extrapolated into literary criticism (or the “human sciences”) as deconstruction and other forms, as well as being further elaborated by Paul de Man and other “post” structuralists or deconstructionists. 74 postmodern condition: not a certain kind of abstraction, not an explicit return to a previous paradigm, not a mixture of everything, not a group or school; instead, every poet hosts an anarchic independence from the thinking of other poets, engaging with literary history in their own way. As such, they can only be understood as parts of a whole, inasmuch as one cannot understand the utter signification of a national flag by simply identifying a single marking or color. In a similar fashion to how Deleuze and Lyotard eschew unity and instead embrace decentering or destabilization to favor a kinesis of entities or perhaps a derridean free play of texts, always differed. This is the justified identity that should be conferred onto both the poets and poetry that are (self)referred to as “different”; known initially for their differing style to the popular hegemonic style of experience, but quickly breaking beyond such rudimentary semiological bondage that only serves to pigeonhole an entire historical era. Their works represent, in a Shklovskian mode, a scathing of the surface through various interpretations of literariness in order to –purposefully or otherwise– defamiliarize automated ideologies and aesthetics; to make new again the language of poetry.

Thus recapitulating the decade of the 1980s –the foundational era of this investigation– one can recall the rise of the poetry and poets of experience and their inherent link with powerful affiliates and institutions of that decade. As Jonathan Mayhew points out, “in fact, this sort of poetry perfectly syncs with the policies and cultural aspirations of the Spanish government during the period in question (…) promoting the idea of a poetry written in an intelligible manner for “normal” citizens of a democratic society” (The Twilight 51-52). By reflecting their poetic ideologies and realist aesthetics with these hegemonic forces, as well as having the state and other fields of power at their disposal (prize juries, editorials, journals, etc.62), the poets of

62 According to Crespo Massieu, the collective of the poesía de la experiencia further propagate their ideologies, both inevitably and willingly, by creating their own cultural monopolies; “instituye entonces desde instancias 75 experience rose towards cultural hegemony.. Once established, and as is typically the case of the upper strata, they began their quest to self-legitimize and cement their position, an act which requires the marginalization, exclusion and creation of the other –that which is deemed to be the heterodox or “different” poets–. The goal of hegemony is achieved through the execution of symbolic violence, as has been alluded to previously, and results in the occlusion of the other:

Crespo Massieu mentions that “todo lo que se sitúe en sus márgenes, fuera de esta normalidad poética (al igual que lo que se sitúe fuera de la normalidad politica) sería ignorado” (71).

Furthermore, according to Blanca Andreu, the poets of experience “ocultan a los poetas para lucrarse. Hay que demandarlos.” (“Reclamación”) and Scarano points to “su rechazo a la operación (…) de estas neovanguardias” (“El sindicato”). The critic Rodríguez Pacheco, commenting on the state of affairs in regards to poetry at this same time, posits that the negative effect of pushing away the innovative and creative poetic production in favor of the acquisition of symbolic capital and power, leads to stagnation: “La poesía está influida hoy (…) por su política de lanzamiento, por el interés de las colecciones, de las editoriales, de la crítica y del poder, determinantes, todos ellos, ajenos a la labor creativa.” (qtd. in Arenaza 18). Indeed, even

Antonio Gamoneda points to the recognition of an aesthetic and ideological praxis in the interest of institutionalized and centralized power acquisition in the poetic systems of the 1980s and

1990s:

Entiendo que este sector de la poesía española presenta concordancia con las formas de

poder del posfranquismo, ya sean éstas de corte socialdemócrata, escoradamente centrista

o llanamente derechista. El caso es que los premios oficiales y oficiosos, los medios de monopolizadas por los profesionales de la crítica (académica, periodística, estrictamente mercantil en ocasiones) los autores y obras que deben ser leídos, se nos anticipa los que perdurarán y se sitúa en los márgenes a los no elegidos, se les condena así a la marginalidad (la más perfecta es el silencio, el blanco de lo inexistente).” (68). 76

comunicación, las editoriales relacionadas con ministerios y corporaciones, los libros de

texto “recomendables” y los editados con dinero público, los críticos que quieren “hacer

carrera” y en sus poses, los propios jefes de gobierno, es decir, la práctica totalidad de

los poderes capaces de suscitar popularidad, consumo y, en modesta medida, atributos de

una especie de star-system, suelen preferir a estos poetas “inteligibles” que yo considero

minirrealistas. (Poesía española 26–27)

With multiple levels of institutions now at their behest, coupled with a keen understanding of the fields of power, the poets of experience reach a dominant position in their field, thus granting them the very mecanismo de selección (Arenaza 17) which will serve to solidify their orthodoxy and pack leadership status. The hegemonic line of discourse would parallel to a greater degree what Paul Valéry claimed as orthodox poetry that functioned mimetically and can “be recognized by its ability to get us to reproduce it in its own form: it stimulates us to reconstruct it identically.” (209). By way of the consolidation of a poetic hegemony in the upper strata of this particular literary hierarchy, there comes the automatic formation of a sociocultural dialectic, what Iravedra has postulated as “realistas frente a los otros” (Realistas y los otros 101).

3.2. Democratic Transition and New Poetic Discourses

As reinforced by critics such as Iravedra, Mayhew, Crespo Massieu and countless others, throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, there begins to emerge a subversive and rebellious discourse from the periphery in response to the ideological and aesthetic consolidation of the poetry of experience. These other poets –los otros– have no concrete tendencies or grouping, but

77 the general poetic climate in the cultural margins evokes an anti-realist tendency by rejecting the hegemonic condemnation of “poetic projects that are aesthetically or intellectually ambitious, on the grounds that they will seem extravagant in the context of contemporary society.” (Mayhew

30)63. The hegemonic poetry becomes scrutinized due to an alleged lack of a moral compass and critical edge, its narcissistic focus on the poet’s experience, poetic stagnation, the clone-like production of their works, and its lack of strong avant-garde sensibilities. Moreover, there was a concerted disdain for what was considered to be the corruption of the center, “El perfil del ´poeta dominante” obtenido consiste entre muchas cosas en ser “corrupto”, escribir “por dinero”,

“acaparar premios importantes”, y actuar como funcionario del Poder, pero además consiste en negar la subversión y olvidar la deconstrucción del fragmento” (El sindicato). The periphery also opposed the consciously crafted cultural hegemony of the poetry of experience and their effective canonization, which was frowned upon for its tendencies to “dominar por dominar” (El sindicato), which is to say, domination for the sake of domination64. All the while the poets of experience would continue elaborating their bourgeois ideals and realist tendencies, or “lo de siempre burgués” (Iravedra Radicales 8), carving out their cultural hegemony and leaving less capital and field space for any elements of difference.

Crespo Massieu has identified these alternative voices and counter-hegemonic figures tracing back as early as the 1980s, even during the poetry of experience’s very own inception period –hinting at the always already existence of the differing other– and persisting throughout the era of their hegemony. Alternative to the hegemonic discourses, there also existed, concomitantly, residual narratives that were anti-systemic in nature to the reigning political and

63 Mayhew, echoing other complaints stemming from the periphery, cites the condemnation of differing poetic aesthetics as a factor that “limits the potential of the genre” (30). 64 One of the original critical texts that deals with the hegemonic power plays and cultural domination of the poets of experience in the discourse of contemporary poetry is El sindicato del crimen. Antología de la poesía dominante (1994), written by Felipe Benítez Reyes under the pen name “Eligio Rabanero”. 78 cultural ideologies of the new democratic Spanish state, or “narraciones alternativas a las narrativas hegemónicas y cuya presencia supone un desafío al proceso de desmemoria puesto en marcha por la política cultural de la época.” (Canteli Vigón 14). The democratic transition of the

1970s and 1980s is one of the factors that propelled a postmodern65 sensibility in Spanish literature, including poetry, “la llegada de la democracia a España posibilita la entrada, tardía y progresiva, de las corrientes de pensamiento y estéticas posmodernas, corrientes dentro de las cuales se inserta la obra de los jóvenes poetas del momento” (Operé 39). The relationship between postmodernism as culturally relevant and the arrival of a democratic system in Spain has been documented as early as the 1980s in La era del vacío. Ensayos sobre individualismo contemporáneo (1983) by Gilles Lipovetsky as well as in critical texts working with the benefit of hindsight in the 2000s66. The eclectic individualism of the poetry in the margins has been associated as stemming from the radical cultural shift which accompanied the rupture of

December 1978 (ratification of the constitution) which cemented the decentralization of the state’s power and formed the democratic autonomous provinces. This change would sweep across the nation, affecting the volksgeist in a unique dialectical fashion, as Operé explains:

“El drástico cambio social que viene con la democracia llena de ilusión y esperanza a

gran parte de la sociedad española, mientras que otra permanece pasiva, incapaz de

asimilar las radicales transformaciones que se ponen en marcha tras casi cuarenta años de

gobierno represivo y autoritario.” (52).

65 The idea of postmodernism as a social and cultural movement can be found in ancillary texts such as Matei Calinescu’s Five Faces of Modernity or Linda Hutcheon’s A Poetics of Postmodernism. 66 Alicia López Operé’s Poetas del siglo XXI. Los caminos de la joven poesía española catalogues the diffusion of the so-called postmodern condition in the works of contemporary and young poets of the 21st century in Spain. 79

Extrapolating this evidence alongside literary fields, two generalized strands of poetry can be followed from 1978 onwards: a “progressive” strand (a poetry of inherent differences) and a

“conservative” strand (the poetry of experience).

A cursory glance at the work and authors that grew and expanded from the periphery, or progressive strand, may include: Fernando Beltrán’s Aquelarre en Madrid, Uberto Stabile’s

Empire eleison (1984), Jorge Riechmann’s Cántico de la erosión (1987) and Cuaderno de Berlín

(1989), Fernando Beltrán’s El gallo de Bagdad (1991), Enrique Falcón’s La marcha de los

150.000.000 (1994), and Juan Carlos Mestre’s La poesía ha caído en desgracia (1992) (Crespo

Massieu 74). Blanca Andreu would publish her first work in the early 1980s –a similarity she shares with the three main poets of this investigation– De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall (1980). Andreu’s first work would command the literary prize Premio

Adonais prior to the advent of the poetry of experience, and, in a future retrospective offered by

Juan Carlos Suñén, would function as the first glimpse at a non-homogenous poetry of plurality:

“ofrecía –frente a la estricta cristalización novísima, aunque sin renegar tampoco de sus logros- un saludable deshielo. Parecía en efecto, que la escritura poética comenzaba a abrirse hacia una restitución de la pluralidad, hacia una nueva poesía sin etiquetas.” (La poesía). By the 1990s is when an explosion of anthologies67 and literary collaborations occurred that finally gave a differentiating voice or presence to the subaltern poets, where some such notable examples include: Las diosas blancas (1985), Ellas tienen la palabra (19485), Feroces. Antología de la poesía radical, marginal y heterodoxa (1998) and an overwhelming number of others that have been mentioned previously68. These are the discourses that begin to show themselves as

67 Prior to Spain’s democratic transition period the publication of anthologies, especially ones radically differing aesthetics or agendas, was scarce. 68 The effect of anthologies, while effective and at time necessary for the survival and diffusion of poetic trends, can lead to their compartmentalization, or canonization, even without an author’s explicit consent: “La historia de la 80 different, firstly a difference to the experience, and counter-hegemony to the established hegemony. These tendencies would begin to coalesce in the 1980s, as Morales Barba points to a number of them –neorealism, neosurrealism, postnovísimos, poetry of silence, dirty realism, and so forth– and would be finally galvanized and surge to the forefront by the 1990s, aided by the rebellion of the so-called poetry of diferencia.

Massieu annunciates the textual tendencies of the poetic other to be an acto de libertad por excelencia69, diametrically opposite of the hegemonic discourse or that of the literary canon in this particular field. However freedom of expression comes at the price of lack of center and thereby creates a venue for symbolic violence and exclusion that perpetuates the legitimation and practice of canonization,

“(…) se nos instituye entonces desde instancias monopolizadas por los profesionales de

la crítica (académica, periodística, estrictamente mercantil en ocasiones) los autores y

obras que deben ser leídos, se nos anticipa los que perdurarán y se sitúa en los márgenes a

los no elegidos, se les condena así la marginalidad (la más perfecta es el silencio).”

(Massieu 68).

This is the expression of an orwelian oppression that, in the words of the poet Federico Gallego

Ripoll, renders invisible those variegated poets who would seek creative liberty in an otherwise hierarchal, sociocultural field structure. The visibility of poetry, and their guides to the

literatura peninsular, especialmente la del siglo XX, se caracteriza por la abundancia y el uso de antologias de poesía como herramienta de canonization de los poetas que son recogidos en las mismas.” (Operé 79). 69That is to say, poetry produced at the sole behest of the individual, ideally free of commitment or obligation from external forces, “Escritura al margen, sin voluntad de poder, sin afán de totalidad, dejando siempre abierta una nueva pregunta, una nueva palabra, inconclusa, esperando ser recibida; dejando siempre un hueco, un margen (…) sin frontera, sin línea de separación.” (Massieu 67). 81

Parnassus, is conducted by those with critical or institutional clout who have the ability to create the canon: “aquella crítica que traza los panoramas, escribe los manuales o, en definitiva, fija el canon y, con ello, determina presencias y ausencias. Esa crítica que piensa desde una lógica hegemónica.” (Canteli Vigón 2).

The elite intellectual community of post-civil war Spain has historically had a penchant for conceiving the literary canon, that is, an arbitrary and segmented group of authors or texts that fit into a compartmentalized, homogenous and grossly simplified agglutinations that would grow to have a pernicious effect on reader and critic alike (one must only ponder the existence of the so-called generations of 98, 27 and so forth, whose authorial affiliations did not always coalesce within a single proposed, or imposed, literary aesthetic). This phenomena is evocative of Foucault’s thoughts within the Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), in which he argues that historians an philologists have systemically only opted to reveal the traditional, conservative and monolithic discourses of periods in history. Foucault alternatively posits that there should be a focus on the “phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity” (4), which in itself reveals “several pasts, several forms of connection, several hierarchies of importance, several networks of determination.” (5). Thus, there is an arrival at an effort to display the disparate, and not solely the centralized, discourses that function within a certain epoch and deconstructing the commonality of “truth” as a social abstracted entity under the command of the operations of power or other interest groups.

In the context of 20th Spanish poetic history, this foucaldian notion of obfuscating the non-traditional discourse can be identified in the immediate post-civil war era. Beginning as early as 1943, and as defined by the literary critic and philologist Dámaso Alonso, two major poetic tendencies emerged: the poesía arraigada (poetry of the establishment) and poesía

82 desarraigada (anti-establishment poetry). The poesía arraigada –which was attuned to the fields of power of those who had emerged victorious after 1939– was considered the “official” poetry of the state and mainly centered around the imperialist journals Escorial and Garcilaso. This group was polarized by the poesía desarraigada of the journal Espadaña, whose members would later become identified with the poesía social. The latter group would be later referred to as the

Generación de 50, although as with all of these “groups”, their members are neither official, entirely accurate and are often debated.

Outside of this dual discourse of power that had been the modus operandi for traditional literary studies of the postwar era, there were other poetic movements, such as postismo or the so called Grupo Cántico. The postismo aesthetic continued the lineage of the pre-civil war vanguardias and surrealist schools, and included poets such as Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Miguel

Labordeta and others. However, due to the harsh social realities and difficult living conditions of the early years of Franco’s regime, these avant-garde poets and their texts were dismissed and mostly forgotten in favor of the discourse of social commentary (poesia social) that spoke in a colloquial and realist style about the trials and tribulations of the Spanish nation and its citizens.

The further chronological evolution of the Spanish poetic literary field through the 1950s and onwards would feature similar patterns of exclusion or othering based on arbitrary factors such as distance from the metropolis (Madrid/Barcelona), date of birth, lack of adherence to the central ideology or dominant aesthetic, and so on:

“confirmando esta tendencia a “olvidar” aquellas obras no estrictamente realistas o no

incluidas, en su momento, en “generaciones”, “promociones” u otras amistosas

agrupaciones; la exclusión se podía deber a la heterodoxia de la escritura pero ni tan

siquiera hacía falta esto: en muchos casos el simple “azar”, vivir fuera de Madrid o

Barcelona, la fecha de nacimiento (…) dejaba fuera de la nómina a poetas de

incuestionable valía.” (Massieu 69).

During the post-Franco era, numerous poets70 with recognizably intrinsic literary value and rupturistic aesthetic tendencies would be “forgotten” due to these proposed reasons and more; Francisca Aguirre would later mention the absurd position of the other in her verses,

“Señor, qué imperdonable: / haber nacido demasiado pronto / y haber llegado demasiado tarde”

(qtd. in Sales 133) 71. A slight, yet progressive, change in the dominion of the poetic canon would manifest itself upon the publication of Josep Maria Castellet’s Nueve novísimos poetas españoles in 1970, which understood that “la pretensión de todos es la de establecer una dinámica vanguardista en las estancadas aguas de la cultural española.” (Castellet 35). The novísimos movement coincided with the period of aperturismo or cultural liberalism (echoing the predominant tendencies of the student revolutions of 1968, la movida madrileña, etc.) that began toward the end of Franco’s regime and lasted on through the democratic transition period.

However, by the start of the 1980’s, the experimental ideologies and aesthetics of avant-garde groups such as the novísimos72, would eventually become culturally and socially overshadowed

70 To name just a few of these poets that have been literarily identified at one to be non-hegemonic throughout the mid to late 20th century:, Jesús Hilario Tundidor, Antonio Hernández, Diego Jesús Jiménez, Rafael Pérez Estrada, Francisco Pino, Antonio Gamoneda, Antonio Carvajal, Vicente Núñez, and of course female poets such as Carmen Conde and Ángela Figuera. 71 Francisca Aguirre was, similarly, a poet that was cast to the side not only for a lack of an arbitrary generational attachment but also because of her gender: “Es fácil intuir que no se trata de simple “azar”: la primacía del criterio generacional o de centralidad de las “capitales” Madrid y Barcelona, como luego el olvido de las voces de mujer parece todo menos inocente o casual.” (Massieu 69). 72 The novísimos would give an new opportunity for critics to disseminate the variability of poetry throughout the 1980s: “La existencia de un campo diversificado sin tendencias unitarias definido por su variabilidad es una constante registrada en los discursos críticos del periodo desde los años ochenta, en los trabajos de Juan José Lanz, José Luis García Martín, Miguel Casado, Ángel Luis Prieto de Paula…” (Méndez Rubio 131). 84 by an upcoming hegemonic tendency73: “El grupo granadino de la nueva sentimentalidad (…) va a ir ocupando espacios y definiendo una práctica poética que ha recibido el nombre de poesía de la experiencia” (Massieu 70). As has been noted previously, the poetry of experience adopted a realist aesthetic and eschewed avant-guard sensibility and linguistic experimentation, opting instead for a colloquial and simple style that mimicked the ambiance, mores and social conditions of the newly democratic Spanish citizen.

3.3. The Poetry of Experience and its Dominance During the 1980s and 1990s

Bolstered by this supposed connection to the individual citizen, the poetry of experience became the dominant poetry of the post-transition period and to that effect, either absorbed divergent groups or inhibited their possibility of cultural expression and diversity: “Lo llamativo de este proceso no es la presencia de esta corriente, sino el carácter excluyente de la misma.

Desde los medios académicos, profesionales de la crítica, suplementos literarios de los grandes medios (…) se va a canonizar esta poética como el horizonte privilegiado.” (Massieu 70).

Through priviledge and exclusion, the cycle of literary repression which fashions a subordinate poetry into a state of near invisibility74 would continue. In 1991 the esteemed literary critic

Francisco Rico would even go so far as to call the canonical poetry of experience la literatura de la libertad (De hoy para mañana)75, thereby consolidating their poetic reign as one parallel to the

73 Méndez Rubio details the obfuscation and disappearance of the avant-garde movements in the 1980’s in La desaparición de la vanguardia (2004). 74 Canteli Vigón considers counter-hegemonic poetry in contemporary Spain –including poets such as José-Miguel Ullán, Carlos Piera, Pedro Provencio, Ildefonso Rodríguez, Olvido García Valdés and Miguel Casado–to be lacking in visibility and diffusion, in such a way that leads to “escrituras invisibles, o, al menos, de visibilidad borrosa, en los panoramas habituales de la poesía española contemporánea.” (1). 75 Rico highlights what he presumes to be the death of avant-garde poetics after 1975 and, consequently, the rise of the classic forms and colloquial language of the poetry of experience: “el penoso recorte o feliz desplume de las alas extremas del pensamiento de izquierdas.(...) Tenía que llegar y llegó: sin censuras a diestra ni a siniestra, sin el 85 triumph of the democratic transition and, silmunateously, quelling the notions of an avant-garde other. Rico additionally posits that the fall of the Francoist regime signified an end to the notion of a “postmodern” ideology or experimentality within avant-garde poetry in Spain.

Moreoever, since censorship and repression had been greatly attenuated in the democratic system, then there was no longer a need for an ideology that would seek to deconstruct the centralized fields of power of the previous epochs in Spanish history; that zenith had past, and in turn, all that endured were failed poetic experiments that were slowly vanishing into the annals of time. Rico argues that a radical, multiplicitous, deconstructive and eclectic aesthetic – postmodernism in general– was not suited for the new Spanish state or its readership, in short,

“no se traduce al castellano” (De hoy para mañana). Conversely, the poetry of experience (and similar literary forms that hitherto followed conservative patterns) would be heralds of a nueva literatura española (new Spanish literature) that would create works that allegedly fulfilled the needs and desires of both the new literary market and the sociohistoric identity of its readers.

This species of poetry that adhered to the reader and the sociocultural circumstance of Spain would, in turn, be rewarded with a mass of adopters and, undoubtedly, diffusion and sales76:

“esas amplias capas podían ser asimismo lo que ni vanguardistas ni comprometidos ni experimentales habían tenido nunca: lectores.” (De hoy para mañana). Any poetic tendency that

espejismo de cambiar el mundo, con armas de papel, (...) a la literatura española de la democracia se le vino a las manos una libertad como en siglos no había conocido.” (De hoy para mañana). 76 History has proved otherwise, as a decade or more after the decline of the poetry of experience, the sales of books of poetry under a system of differentiation has not buckled, but rather continued to rise and stifled the idea of the death of the poetic readership: “Es difícil conocer el dato exacto sobre la cantidad de poemarios publicados cada año; como muestra, podemos utilizar a modo de vara de medida la convocatoria de una página de Internet de cierta relevancia para escoger los cinco mejores libros de poesía de dicho año. Un grupo de críticos que se denominan independientes y que, a menudo, hacen una crítica de la crítica, han elaborado una lista con 323 libros en el año 2009 (278 en 2008 y 348 en 2010), y me consta que en dicha lista no aparecen otros poemarios también publicados. En definitiva, con respecto a la creación poética en nuestro país, no hay que preocuparse.” (Lorente Muñoz Es posible comprender). 86 was different, or adhered to an abstract or foreign concept of “postmodernism”77, is that which critics like Rico feared78 and (in)advertently repressed79. Those critics allied with a conservative agenda, adopted and backed the poetry of “normality” which was already being embraced by the establishment and which played within the socially embraced ideal of poetic formation80:

“(…) el destierro de cualquier preocupación histórico o colectiva, el ensimismamiento, la

vuelta a la privacidad y el rechazo del viejo compromiso de las vanguardias históricas por

cambiar el lenguaje y transformar el mundo. Ahora no, ahora se trata de ir al

supermercado cultural y comprar un poemario que nos hable, de forma sencilla (…) de

“entornos familiares” “fantasías estrictamente personales” y, a ser posible, en un metro

clásico y en un tono coloquial.” (Massieu 71).

On the other hand, by referring to an eclectic postmodernism in contemporary Spanish literature, Rico was likely refering to the the vast amounts of poetry that was being produced at the time that did not engage in the style of the poetry of experience. However, as in inevitable in systemic evolution, a particular primary system (herein, poetry of experience) wil begin to

77 According to Bagué Quílez, the poetry of experience would suppress or outright deny the qualities of postmodernism: “la poesía de la experiencia niega algunas de las premisas esenciales de la posmodernidad” (61). 78 The prescription to an aesthetic or ideology of postmodernism was a negative characteristic for Rico; “Posmodernidad describe; se diría que posmodernismo prescribe. Sólo al segundo hay que temerle.” (De hoy para mañana) 79 Given the apparent importance of the literary critic in the adoption of a canon in contemporary Spanish literature (as paralleled in the work on the importance of the canon by T.S. Eliot for the European and English traditions), the words of Rico would eventually become the official truth: “las afirmaciones de Francisco Rico, tan cargadas de subjetividad, pasaron a ser la versión oficial de la reciente poesía española (Massieu 72). 80 The consolidation of a poetic center or elevation to hegemony by critics like Fransisco Rico, creates an exclusive club or elite that, according to the theories set forth by Even-Zohar, set in motion a process of auto-legitimation in the literary markets. According to Massieu, the hegemony of the poets of experience would last until at least 2006 at the time of his writing: “la poesía de la normalidad que ha pasado a convertirse en el horizonte casi único que define nuestra poesía en el año 2006. Y la coincidencia con lo que Francisco Rico describía y prescribía en 1996 alcanza a la visión de los poetas como una especie que se autoreconoce felizmente en las leyes del mercado y se perpetúa en este reconocimiento: “Vecinos al club, a la asociación o la tribu urbana, el número y la actividad de los poetas en la ciudad democrática asegura su pervivencia como especie”. (Massieu 72). 87 petrify in its struggle to maintain power and thus eventually lose control of the systems of production and capital. Thus, Even-Zohar’s process of conversion begins, wherein secondary systems (poetry of differences) begin to project and sublimate their own interests and desires into the polysystem. As has been previously demonstrated, vestiges of discontent and the general galvanization of poetry in the peripheries began appearing in the early 1990’s, including the group Colectivo Alicia Bajo Cero’s Poesía y poder and a host of other critical texts, anthologies, literary and, especially, poems which were markedly different from those of the center; “al final de la década de los 90 cuando estas prácticas poéticas se hacen un poco más visibles y asistimos a un cuestionamiento generalizado de muchos de los planteamientos de la poesía de la experiencia.” (Massieu 74).

3.4. A Revolution of diferencia

In light of these realizations, composed in hind sight over a decade after the events of the poetic hegemony and counter hegemony of the 1990s, there still remains a great difficulty in categorizing the other poetry that is not the poetry of experience. At times, the poetry in the periphery is given blanket labels or categorizations such as poesía política, la realidad del lenguaje, poesía crítica social, realism socialista, poesía del silencio, feísmo, realismo sucio, surrealist poetry, feminist poetry and so on. Even in just this small sample of “trends”/labels in contemporary Spanish poetry a potential richness can be inferred, a keyhole into the vast differences of poetic compositions that “surge libre, en los márgenes” (Massieu 75). As a whole,

Gullón speculates in Los mercaderes en el templo de la literatura (2004) that there is a avant- garde vein in the Spanish literary tradition following the transition period (post-1975) that

88 embodies a literatura en libertad (free literature), one that distances itself from a capitalistic and oligarchic intent of contemporary literature. If Rico associates the poetry of experience as the nueva literatura, then that leaves the other poetic tendencies as literatura en libertad marking them as “una transición a nivel internacional hacia la época posindistrial y postmoderna que, en el caso español, coincidiria también la particular transición del régimen dictatorial al regimen democrático.” (Canteli Vigon 6). In the case of the poetic margins of the literay fields of the

1990s and 2000s, which may suppose a continuation of a supposed ideology of postmodern and differentiated “free literature”, some broad aesthetic and ideological characteristics can be delineated, based on the categories Germán Labrador Méndez highlights in Sin novedad en el

Parnaso (2006):

1. A multitude of options, currents, aesthetics, languages, and influences that are, in

effect, nearly impossible to broadly categorize for the purpose of analysis, and this

manifestation of multiplicity is assumed by the critical body to be the main

characteristic of contemporary Spanish poetry81.

2. Literary liberty or freedom as a defining characteristic. In contemporary Spanish

poetry, there is not one singular paradigm with sufficient potency to attract all poets,

which in turn provokes the multiplication of poetic possibilities, singularities, and

81 Méndez further subdivides this idea of multiplicity into two general models: the first is a multidimensional and interliterary poetry which conveys “transmisión de puntos identitarios, de enunciados sapienciales (basta con observar sus verbos principales), vecina a lo filosófico (por acción, omisión o por aspiración), profunda (aun cuando juego a la ironía) y trascendente (aun cuando se mofe de ello). (…) Bajo esta línea caben sin mayores problemas simbolismos, neoneorromanticismos, neosurrealismos, confesionalísmos y otras peculiaridades ensayadas con mayor o menor ambición, compromiso o novedad.” (132). The second borders on the theme of art for art’s sake, or “modelo lúdico, es decir, una poética que, por justa oposición, no confía en fundaciones ni en verdades que quiere, eso sí, seguir enunciando, escribiendo y publicando, pero ya como mero disfrute, como acción, por el placer de poner construcciones, modelos, estructuras en funcionamiento y ver cómo interaccionan, qué cosas hacen.” (133). 89

voices; this becomes a reality that stamps individuality as a potent, prominent and

valuable characterisitic82.

3. A return to the oral tradition, in that both text and word reclaim a sonorous quality

through the explicit elaboration of rhetorical devices (alliteration, onamatapea,

interjections, phonetic games, etc.). The sonorous and oral aspect of the text

functions a cohesive element that serves to further the performative and

communicative value of poetry that has the capability of merging text into action.

4. In relation to the experimental approaches to poetry, there is also a reinterpretation on

the materiality of the text and intents are made to innovative throughout the poem’s

inherent typographical features. In this way, the poetic text overflows from written

sign and structured text into other forms and mediums, from concrete poetry to visual

language poetry that all play with spatial reconfiguration; the rigidity of traditional

poetic modes is dismantled and blended in with contemporary sensibilities.

As the theory of “free literature” seems to largely circumvent formal theoretical interpretation of its derivative works, so then does it become poet’s constructive tool for building an individual poetic identity, “un lugar donde la literature sirve al sujeto, no como instrumento de indagación en le mundo, sino como herramienta para la propia construcción” (Méndez 141).

This is characteristic of a dispersed poetics of the 1980s and 1990s which are tailored by the individual without the explicit need to associate or advocate to a group ideology that may dilute or distort the intended significations; likewise, it is similarly a trait that will be inherited by the

82 Any idea of lineage or theoretical approach to the poetics of the contemporary poets is thought to be auxiliary, if not overtly dismissed as an inorganic and constraining device: “la teoría se ha convertido en un tema tabú de lo poético: hacer teoría explícita y hacerla en puúblico, y sobre todo, enfrentarse con los léxicos de los otros, desarrollar complejamente argumentos en diálogo o discusión es algo sin duda más allá de los deseos y de las intenciones de nuestros poetas contemporáneos.” (Méndez 134). 90 younger generations of the early 2000s and 2010s, “lo que principalmente caracteriza la obra de los jóvenes poetas españoles de hoy es que no hay una tendencia común, ni voluntad de la misma, ni manifestos, ni objetivos visibles comunes a todos ellos: hay, en cambio, "poeticas dispersas"” (Operé 16). Canteli Vigon attributes the essentialist qualities of contemporary

Spanish poetry as becoming a “grupo sin grupo” (4) or adopting the point of view of the poet and critic Miguel Casado,

“(…) desde el punto de vista poético, no un grupo, sino un espacio plural, un campo de

problemas y debate, un lugar abierto y cooperativo sin registro de entrada ni de salida.

Ninguna de las revistas incluyó nunca un editorial ni adoptó un programa, docenas de

escritores pasaron por sus páginas. Y la duda sobre ese nosotros sólo parecía poder

contestarse como propone Jankélévitch cuando habla de “soledades paralelas”, “de

absolutos a la vez separados y asociados” (…) como ópera en la comunidad de los que no

tiene comunidad.” (Canción 307).

At one point in late 20th century field of poetry, these individual and marginal voices

(demographically the overwhelming norm) would rise up to challenge the center in a relatively small, yet concentrated, movement of rebellion kno wn as the poetry of diferencia. Initially employed as a wide umbrella term that endeavored to encompass many different poets, esthetics and ideologies, the label itself seems to have entered literary circles through its use in

Fundamentos histórico-literarios para un concepto de “la literatura de la diferencia” (1996) by

Antonio Enrique. In Fundamentos, expounds on the initial precepts of a so-called “literature de

91 la diferencia” and thus serves as the foundational precedent to the movement of diferencia83.

Enrique’s work and its titular use of diferencia, was followed by Antonio Rodríguez Jiménez’s publication of Elogio de la diferencia (Antología consultada de poetas no clónicos) (1997) and

“…y del Sur” (1997), as well as “De lo imposible a lo verdadero” (2000) by Antonio Garrido

Moraga. However, the point of origin, or genesis, can be traced back to a piece published in the

ABC Cultural on May 6th, 1994 titled “Los poetas de ‘la diferencia’ arremeten”. This news article demonstrated the workings of a nascent group of fourteen poets84 whose esthetic and ideology was explicitly opposed to the poetry of the hegemony and whose goal was “dejar al desnudo y denunciar el protagonismo de una poesía epigonal y decadente.” (Arenaza 16). These so-called poets of diferencia were staging a clear protest against the dominant poetic aesthetic of experience which not only had been oppressing the secondary strata of the Spanish poetic fields and holding dominion over a large portion of the symbolic capital but, from their perspective, had already begun to petrify and automatize literarily.85

83 In this work, Antonio Enrique expounds on the democratic and “free” precepts of the poetry of diferencia and its antithesis to the oppressive and conservative ideology of the poetry experience: “Nos limitamos, o éste al menos es el propósito general, desmentido en lo circunstancial por polémicas normalmente causadas por personas ajenas a la literatura de creación (tribunos públicos que durante todo un decenio han primado descaradamente, y con poca policía de sus personas y buen nombre, la opción de La Experiencia por creerla progresista y de izquierda, ante el alelamiento y mala conciencia, complejo de inferioridad, inhibición y en suma ignorancia de sus contrarios políticos), a afirmar un discurso literario libre, asentado en las convicciones liberales, libertarias incluso, de la mayoría de nosotros. Y esto es porque sabemos y entendemos que cumple y basta la normalidad democrática para que toda concepción de la vida y del arte coexista ya que seguramente responde a sentimientos e ideas no gratuitos socialmente. Esto sí, en esa orfandad de valores, en este acoso de la individualidad a que nos somete la globalización de la cultura, la obsesión por la uniformidad, muchos de nosotros no estamos dispuestos a renunciar a la identidad histórica de nuestra literatura, fundada en la defensa contra la opresión de los muchos contra pocos, y ello es porque de la conciliación con el pasado es la esperanza del porvenir.” (6). 84 The fourteen poets who initially staged this protest in 1994 are identified as: Pedro Rodríguez Pacheco, Federico Gallego Ripoll, Enrique Morón, Juan León, Fernando de Villena, Manuel Jurado López, Antonio Enrique, Carmelo Guillén Acosta, Carlos Clémenston, Antonio Rodríguez Jimenez, José Lupiáñez, Jordi Villalonga, María Antonia Ortega, Pedro J. de la Peña. 85 The literary petrification or “wearing out” of the hegemony is inexorable, as is the subversive response of this stimuli from the margins, as Bourdieu explains: “The subversive action of the avant-garde, discrediting current conventions, meaning the norms of production and evaluation of the aesthetic orthodox, and making the products realized according to these norms seem superseded and outmoded, gets objective support from the wearing out of the effect of consecrated works. This wearying out has nothing mechanical about it. It is primarily the result of the routinization of production associated with the impact of epigones and academicism (…) and arises from the 92

The poets that rallied under the banner of the poetry of diferencia sanctioned a creative, personal and varied poetry that was democratically free and open for all poets of the late 20th.

Through this freedom, they additionally called for a reform of the conservative institutions of power as well as the compromised agenda of critics, opting instead for a decidedly unbiased approach: “una crítica responsable, independiente de adscripciones ideológicas; y unas políticas editoriales, de premios y subvenciones, imparciales y libres de determinantes comerciales, que aseguren un “espacio abierto para todos” (Arenaza 16). The poets of diferencia not only pursued egalitarian sociocultural discourses for the repressed voice box of the subaltern (historically a difficult and uphill battle), but, more importantly, their take away idea would reverberate the loudest in the decade to come, that their poetry is not a singular homogenous aesthetic but rather a plurality of equally valid aesthetics: “La poesía de la Diferencia no es una estética, sino una pluralidad de estéticas y por ello tenía muy difícil el combate frente a quienes contaban con el respaldo del poder político.” (Palacios Guzmán 3). The first moments of this particular counter movement can be found as early as 1988 in cultural journals and other outlets including: Diario de Jerez, Diaro del Guadalete and later in Papel Literario, Cuadernos del Sur and Diario

Córdoba, culminating with the purported “Ateneo de Sevilla”8687 in the Café Libertad (Madrid) and Posada del Potro (Córdoba), before making a national appearance in the publication of the

ABC Cultural.

repeated ad repetitive application of proved procedures and the uninventive use of an art of inventing already invnted.” (Rules of Art 253). 86 This particular cultural gathering, or “ateneo”, of the poets of diferencia hallmarked a similar event staged by the Generación of 27’ decades prior (Arenaza 16). 87 Those poets who attended the ateneo in the name of difference to the hegemony of experience, would do so in protest of the “official” literary discourse: “A principios de los 90, con el respaldo de toda la crítica oficial y mimada por el ministerio y las consejerías de cultura de las principales comunidades autónomas de la nación, la literatura de la Experiencia comienza a ser hegemónica. Pero entonces surge la llamada “Poesía de la Diferencia”. Muchos de los autores que se han visto marginados a causa de las manipulaciones de los de la Experiencia, se reúnen, primero en Madrid, en el café “Libertad”, luego en Córdoba, en la posada del Potro y después en el Ateneo de Sevilla, para elevar una protesta contra la literatura oficial.” (Enrique El grupo poético “Ánade” 3). 93

It was not long as these meetings that the members of the Salón de Independientes in

Seville ratified the Manifiesto de Granada88 (1994), an act which would engender the actual movement known as diferencia. The same group of individuals would additionally enact two literary congresses in an effort to disseminate their message of poetic deautomatization: La diferencia posible in 1995 and Nuevas tendencias literarias in 1996. The poet Antonio

Rodríguez Jiménez expresses the concerns of these poets of diferencia in contrast to the clone- like poetry of their peers: “Miraba a mi alrededor y veía con estupor que las voces de la gente de mi generación eran idénticas. Era como si la gente estuviera empeñada en decir cosas a toda costa, aunque fuesen sandeces.” (qtd. in Arenaza 16). In stark contrast to the position takings of the poets of la otra sentimentalidad the aims of diferencia was not for literary domination or power, but rather a return to the attitude of rupture of groups such as the novísimos (who in turn broke from the realism of the mid-20th century).

The specific literary movement –or microcosm– known as the poetry of diferencia did not achieve a lasting aesthetic or ideological influence in the poetic field; however through their actions they managed to burst open the flood gates of rupture and renewal, allowing the latent and marginal poetry to grow into prominence once more. By providing a channel to the subaltern, it was not long after their intractable expression of concern with the hegemony that others would join their chorus, albeit not specifically under the moniker of “poetry of diferencia”. Beginning only one year after the appearance of the poets of diferencia, José Luis

García Martín published a prologue to Selección Nacional (1995) aptly titled La guerra literaria.

88 Gregorio Morales, one of the founding members associated with the Manifiesto de Granada, comments years later about the cultural production of this group at the time of inception, even stating that this was a movement that deserved to be catalogued in Spain’s literary history; “se decantaba por una nueva estética en consonancia con la más adelantada modernidad. Entre uno y otro manifiesto (y posteriormente hasta la paulatina extinción del Salón), hubo cientos de actividades, reuniones, actos y polémicas con los detentadores de la cultura oficial. En algún momento habrá que realizar la historia de este movimiento singular en las letras europeas.” (Morales). 94

Algunas prescindibles precisiones acerca de la última poesía española (1995) which was one of the first critical works to diagnose and expose the realist vs. other dialectic that was actively plaguing the consciousness of the poets of diferencia (clónicos vs. no-clónico)89 and those who would come in their stead.

That the circle of poetry outside the center was indeed quite diverse90, ranging from the unknown to those with moderate prestige91, and evidences that diferencia was an explosive singularity of energy that propelled a generation of poets in their own unique and divergent paths. It must be stressed that the poetry of diferencia the poetry of difference are two unique

(though necessarily related) phenomena. The poetry of diferencia refers strictly to the short lived poetic group that sprang up in 1994 in direct opposition to the hegemony of the poetry of experience. On the other hand, a “poetry of difference” seeks to elicit the overarching zeitgeist or idea of a fragmented, variegated and differentiated poetry being composed in all corners of contemporary Spanish society at the end of the 20the century and into the 21st. In a deleuzian microcosm-macrocosm structure, the former is an individual entity within the logics and parameters of the more totalizing latter, though in this case, paradoxically, did in some way spark the genesis of the latter. Of course they both shared two defining characteristics: 1. an attitude against the reigning ideology of experiencia and 2. a common esthetic with the only traits being total independence of style; “la libertad y la independencia artísticas frente a las imposiciones

89 García Martín assumed the following generalizations about the poetry of experience and the nebulous entity of the other: “realismo, uso del lenguaje común, deseo de ser entendido, racionalidad, utilidad, coherencia, por un lado; por el otro, surrealismo, hermetismo, despreocupa ción por el lector, alteraciones de la sintaxis, rechazo de la lógica, etc.” (18). 90 Although it will be detailed later, some of the aesthetics which have been identified under diferencia include: realismo sucio, poesía politíca, poesía experimental, poesia de la conciencia, poesía del silencio, poesía linguística, and so on. This list does not even consider intertextuality or other possible lenses (modernist, postmodernist, neobarroque, etc.). As Mayhew posits, numerous poets even have a relationship, even if in some cases only fleeting, to the aesthetic of experience (The Twilight 38). 91 Linares understands the poets of diferencia as a diverse group ranging from “poetas de tercera fila que no han tenido éxito. Otros, por contra, han ganado premios, por lo que su actitud parece inconsecuente.” (qtd. in Arenaza 17). 95 falaces de los medios y a la indigna cobardía de los intelectuales minados por las subvenciones y el agasajo de los políticos de turno.” (Vizoso 470). Prieto de Paula reaches a similar conclusion:

Se oponían a la poesía de la experiencia porque la identificaban con la banalidad

biográfica, el conservadurismo estético y la complacencia con el estado de cosas, en los

años finales del siglo surgieron (…) otras formas de oposición, con el marbete de «poesía

de la diferencia», cuyos integrantes acusaban a los de la experiencia de «clónicos» y

estéticamente intercambiables, y, sobre todo, de connivencia con el poder, a la que se

debería su omnipresencia cultural en foros, premios y ferias del libro. (Hacia el tercer

milenio).

Throughout their dialogue against the aesthetics and cultural dominion of the poetry of experience, the poets of diferencia and those that followed have no choice but to engage in the sociocultural reality of fighting for symbolic capital. This was no doubt a difficult task from the position of the margins and poets of the era saw themselves as culturally invisible or even relegated to a state of gramscian subalternity. This extract from the introductory poem of

Federico Gallego Ripoll’s Los poetas invisibles (2007) highlights this particular socioculturally incorporeal position:

Los poetas invisibles escriben poemas invisibles con palabras invisibles sobre cuadernos invisibles (…) Reciben premios invisibles y aceptan las críticas invisibles que a veces subrayan la evidencia de su absurdo intento de visibilidad.

Pero a nadie privan de su sitio, Su ventana o su columna; Nadie habrá de preocuparse de retrasar su camino por ellos. (9)

This is a trend of discontent pervasive in this era –another example might be Mestre’s evocative title of La poesía ha caído en desgracia (1992)– and even as early as the novísimos, Méndez

Rubio has identified a “pacto del olvido” (31), “política de borradura” (31) and “invisibilización”

(15), all of which lead to the obfuscation of difference, or “la tendencia a borrar los aspectos más conflictivos de las poéticas más visibles (…) lo peor para un poder, o para una tentativa de poder autoritario, es que se le aparezcan sus desaparecidos.” (15).

Massieu further extrapolates on the invisibility of the marginalized poets of 1980s and even 1990s, though noting that their struggle eventually allows a metamorphosis in the narrative of power and poetic expression; “Y así hacia finales de los 80 se puede apreciar una inflexión que marcará un cierto cambio de rumbo en la década de los 90; con muchas dificultades, luchando siempre contra la invisiblidad de la crítica establecida en los medios más difundidos.”

(73). However, during the time of the poets of diferencia in the mid 1990s, or simply those who were playing against the dominant aesthetic, they would find themselves continually at odds with the hierarchy. Luis García Montero –a figure who has come under fire by critics like Mayhew et.al. for his constant defense and promotion of conservative poetic tendencies– in a seminal piece which functions as an aegis to his poetic movement, Una musa vestida con vaqueros92, lambasts the marginal poetry and their critics which attack the poetry of experience. Una musa defends the conservative use of realist poetry and decries the protests against the poetry of

92 Luis García Montero serves as the unofficial representative or social spokesperson for the poets of experience, a reality which can be noted across several of his apologetic treatises and books of poems, such as Confesiones Poéticas (1993), ¿Por qué no sirve para nada la poesía? (1994), El oficio como ética (2000), Poética, política, ideología (2002) and La intimidad de la serpiente (2003). 97 experience, while at the same time postulating that the poets who hold little or no symbolic capital or a lack of control over fields of power and influence are inherently “third rate” poets who are simply avant-garde for the sake of being avant-garde 93 . Montero continues by denouncing criticism against the poets of experience as “una acalorada colección de rabietas que proviene de las envidias al uso.” (Una musa) and sarcastically denotes these rebellious movements of differences as products of offended narcissistic “geniuses” which time will eventually pacify and silence. Other similar criticism echoes Montero, such as Víctor García de la Concha who proclaims that the poetry of diferencia as a whole is void of valid signification and should be ignored: “no merece la pena prestar atención, pues carece de un mínimo de densidad teórica. En la historia de la literatura poética figuran centenares de escritos semejantes.”

(qtd. in Arenaza 16). Antonio de Villena, in his anthology that would reunite the texts of various poets of experience, united all the poets of diferencia under one very simple category: failure.

“Este heteroclítico grupo final –autodenominado de la diferencia– está compuesto por

poetas de varia edad y condición, cuyo único nexo unitivo es el fracaso, la conciencia de

su falta de éxito. Explicable en unos por una clara ausencia de calidad y en otros – de

mucho mejor página – por un nítido desfase histórico.” (10 menos 30, 11).94

A host of other criticism stems from José Luis García Martín, Álvaro Valverde, and

Abelardo Linares, who likewise disparage the poets of diferencia as lacking any significant

93 Whether or not “siempre destinados a demostrar que los poetas de tercera fila son los mejores y que los nombres reconocidos alcanzaron el éxito gracias a una especie de traición consistente en no romper demasiado.” (Una musa). 94 In stark contrast, Villena would laud the poetry of experience as both commercially successful and home to the key poets of the last decades of the 20th century: “Lo que para mí quedaba claro (…) era que entre todos los tonos de la generación del 80, la llamada poesía de la experiencia se había convertido en el más transitado, el más aplaudido, el más seguido, el más denostado –clara señal de éxito– y en el que estaban algunos, bastantes, de los poetas clave del momento.” (10 menos 30, 15) 98 literary value or aporting any cultural contribution. García Martín considers the esthetic of diferencia to be damned; a group of marginalized second-rate poets that will amount to merely a historical footnote, citing a supposed lack of quality in their books of poetry (Arenaza 16).

Meanwhile, the poets of experience would shield themselves behind the ramparts of their power and influence, and later just answered with silence, perhaps unaware of the magnitude of the rebellion at their gates: “Los críticos de la Experiencia replicaron en la prensa nacional defendiéndose mal que bien de aquella avalancha que se les venía encima. Más tarde, faltos de argumentos, prefirieron dar el silencio por respuesta.” (Palacios Guzmán 3). Even when the hegemony would cease to directly assail the uprising of the periphery, such as the poets of difererencia, they would attempt to strip away avenues of poetic expression and social dissemination: “ensayan una nueva estrategia: el silenciamiento absoluto de todos los marginales y el arrebatarles hasta el último vehículo posible de expresión que tengan.” (Palacios Guzmán 4).

This is the capitalist-darwinian state95 in which the poets of diferencia enacted their revolt, for if not perhaps they would have forever washed away, forgotten in the historic memory of Spanish literature. Whether or not these criticisms of difference from the center have any validity is largely irrelevant, what matters is that a revolution took place and its influence quaked the foundation of the Spanish poetic field of the era. However, the clash of thesis and antithesis, tradition and avant-garde, is inevitable if not necessary in the maintenance of a system and the poetry of the late 20th century aptly showcases this Hegelian motif, “una nueva actualización de la antigua dialéctica entre tradición y vanguardia, o logocentrismo y experimentalismo, que articula buena parte de la poesía del siglo XX.” (Prieto de Paula Otras corrientes)

95 Iravedra takes a marxist bourgeois-proletariat approach in opposition to the poets of experiencia: “(…) el protagonista de esta escritura es un sujeto participativo al cien por cien de la sociedad mercantilista (…) protagonizada, en efecto, por un sujeto burgués cómodamente instalado en la triunfante sociedad neoliberal, dejará fuera cualquier voluntad de aproximación a los márgenes de miseria que la circundan.” (Radicales, marginales y heterodoxos 6). 99

3.5. The Aftermath of Difference

In spite of their best intentions, the literary group critically known as diferencia would be short lived and, in an epistemological sense, did not culturally or socially amount to any immediate or significant counter momentum to the poets of experience. The fall of the poetry of diferencia, was followed by a return to the state of the individual, though with a renewed poetic kinesis: “natural que, dadas sus fuertes individualidades creadoras, cada uno de los escritores de la Diferencia regresase a su propio mundo después de haber manifestado enérgicamente su protesta.” (Palacios Guzmán 4). However, unbeknownst to either side of the conflict, a subtle yet significant victory in the battle against the hegemony was achieved: by expressing their subaltern status and cries for independence, the poets of diferencia had effectively opened a poetic and sociocultural Pandora’s box. It would not take long before an outpouring of unique poetic expression from all corners of Spain would manifest themselves, many of which were present even a decade before but had remained voiceless or culturally stifled. Even the “creators” of hegemonic “generations” or groups during the late 20th century –typically concocted by way of agglutinations in poetic anthologies– were not able to concisely codify this new poetic insurrection: that is, a nebulous entity of differences that lay outside the boundaries of experience throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Rafael Suárez Plácido elucidates that, after the rupture with the poetry of experience, the poets would exercise poetic aesthetics and ideologies that were fundamentally “muy diferentes a las de la mayoría de los autores de su generación, que entrarían de lleno en la llamada poesía de la experiencia” (La inteligencia). Julieta Valero deems these poets “En la búsqueda de zonas de encuentro entre poéticas diferenciadas” (2). These alternative

100 poets primordially differ from those of experience, but following this, are only identifiable as constantly in a state that is different or differing; precisely, what Rico admits to be the

“ceremonia de diversidad” (Poesía española actual) is the becoming into différance, and is precisely, a poetry of difference.

Insofar as achieving visibility within diversity, on one hand, the hegemonic lines of discourse in the 1980s and 1990s find themselves supported by state apparatuses, such as the national Ministerio de Cultura that concedes national prizes, including Premio de Literatura en

Lengua Castellana Miguel de Cervantes, Premio National de Las Letras and the Premio

National de Literatura. Alongside the national institutions there are the private publishers of poetry –who also each have their own literary prizes–, including the three major houses established prior to the democratic transition (Visor, Tusquest and Rialp), and those during or after (Hiperión, Pre-Textos and Renacimiento). The poets of experience would have major partnerships or ties with these larger scale publishing houses (especially Visor and Hiperión96) allowing for the acquisition of economic (prize money 97 ) and symbolic capital (awards, publications, etc.). This would subsequently allow them to be adopted by a wider audience, be presented with a longer publication run with more total volume, and adquire a textual “legacy” in reciprocity to the perceived value of a particular editorial or journal group98. Moreover, the

96 Both Visor and Hiperión have greatly benefitted from the high readership numbers (and therefore sales) of the poetry of experience, thus in turn reciprocating this profit with literary prizes, as Juan Carlos ñAbril make clear in El mercado de la poesía de la experiencia: “Ambas son las editoriales que más han vendido y se han beneficiado de este contacto con el público lector, y buena muestra de este beneficio es que acaparan casi el 90% de los premios literarios españoles.” (12) 97 Due to Spain’s lower number of subsidies for the publication of books of poetry, prize earnings can help attenuate these costs and therefore allow the poet to disseminate and share their creative talent. However, this can and has also lead to what is known in economics as the cumulative advantage (colloquially; the rich get richer and the poor get poorer), which sets the table for hegemony (such as the case of the poetry of experience, as Abril has also pointed out): “A falta de estas ayudas institucionales, los premios literarios suplen esta carencia y realizan la función de estímulo de la creación literaria, y qué mejor espacio para su fomento que estos premios.” (12). 98 The prominent journals welcomed highly influential and canonical poets, granting them a priviledged cultural position and, in return, higher exposure and prestige for the journal: “El poeta de la experiencia dialoga con el lector, tras un análisis previo de a qué lector se enfrenta, qué gustos y preocupaciones tiene (…) Y estas claves le 101 publication of anthologies can likewise function as an avenue of self-promotion and a means of legitimation and the formation of a power position to occupy and hold against others. A notable example of the power of anthologies for the establishment of a poetic currents such as the poetry of experience, is José Luis García Martín’s anthology entitled La generación de los 80 (1988), which presents the poets of this aesthetic as a cultural “generation” and thus implies a rise in status or prestige within a given hierarchy (or field). In addition, the poets of center (experience) find themselves engaged in many major venues of exposure, beyond even publishing houses:

Se fomenta la presencia de poetas españoles en centros de enseñanza (Institutos y

Universidades), así como en congresos, seminarios, ferias del libro, festivales poéticos y

otros eventos literarios. También financia la presencia de poetas españoles en el

extranjero en festivales y ferias internacionales del libro, colaborando con otras

instituciones públicas o privadas como el Instituto Cervantes, embajadas o universidades.

(Operé 16)

One should keep in mind, however, that even the most popular or recognized poets sell only a very small number of book copies, according to Rodríguez Cañada, “un poeta que venda más de 400 ejemplares de un mismo título se convierte en un autor consolidado. Y si pasa de

2.000, es un auténtico superventas.” (133). One must recognize that the overarching impact of poetry in Spain, while minor in terms of statistical audience, reception and scope, still plays its own powerful role in shaping cultural and literary historiography. Even the success of the poetry and poets of experience –as a force backed by canonicity and hegemony in a particular field– is

proporcionarán a esta poesía un lugar privilegiado y un éxito que en otras etapas de la poesía española ha sido ciertamente impensable.” (Abril 14). 102 relative, which is to say, it was never so suffocating as to stamp out all opposition in a machiavelian fashion. Yet “they” remained the “enemy” or “adversary” of all that were different, regardless of whether these others even personally decided to confront, understand or assimilate the tendencies of the poetry of experience. Long after the poetry of experience expires as a dominant trend during the early 2000s, critics continue to dialogue with their texts, interviewed poets comment on their strong presence, and their decade’s long history of hegemony and superventas continue to shape contemporary Spanish poetry and its study. A logical conclusion is perhaps their transformation into an entity of dis-individualized power, an ephemeral cultural panopticon whose will and essential power continues to permeate the zeitgeist and forces others into (in)action.

However, as Foucault details when speaking of power relations, “Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free” (The Subject 789) and those who are free willed feel it their responsibility to fight the stalwart oppression presumed to reside at the other end of the binary of power; “At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom.” (The Subject

790)99. When the hegemony of the poetry of experience is exercised over those who are different, so then will this provoke a revolution and evolution, a bid for literary freedom that will progressively further the discourse of contemporary Spanish poetry out of a state of Even-

Zohar’s “petrification”. 100

99 The analysis of power relations can be achieved through a five step process that Foucault delineates: 1. Exposing the system of differentiations, 2. The objectives pursued by those who act upon others, 3. The means of bringing power relations into being, 4. Forms of institutionalization being commanded, 5. The degrees of rationalization or justification of the exercise of power (The Subject 792). 100 The mechanism of power relations has the ability to bring about change through struggle, much like is detailed by Bourdieu and Even-Zohar: “But what makes the domination of a group, a caste, or a class, together with the resistance and revolts which that domination comes up against, a central phenomenon in the history of societies is that they manifest in a massive and universalizing form, at the level of the whole social body, the locking together of power relations with relations of strategy and the results proceeding from their interaction.” (Foucault The Subject). 103

As a “power relationship implies, at least in potentia, a strategy of struggle” (Foucault

The Subject 794), generally these struggling other would be forced to find, and in some cases even create, their own venues of publication and diffusion independent of the center. Two important publishing houses for avant-garde or counter-current poetry are DVD Ediciones

(founded in 1996 – though now defunct) and Bartleby (founded in 1998) 101, both of which

“ofrecen otros productos que no son de la corriente hegemónica, pero siempre desde la poesía, como autores extranjeros o autores españoles que se han descolgado o disentido abiertamente de ese lenguaje experiencial” (emphasis added, Abril 12)102. Aside from their own reunions in literary festivals or publications through local or regional agencies, the poets of difference find unchallenged channels of expression throughout the internet –some of which will be referenced throughout this study–: digital journals and publications, social media outlets, blogs for literary criticism, personal webpages, literary forums and so on. The formation of small or independent literary venues for the counter hegemony, according to Bourdieu, allow for subversion and competition from the margins, “anti-institutional institutions, of which the paradigm might be the

Salon des Refusés or the small avant-garde journal, and mechanisms of competition able to provide the kinds of incentives and rewards that make efforts at emancipation and subversion conceivable.” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 258).

Through independent venues, the poets of difference, and other poets in the periphery, rallied against what they consider to be the mimetic and dominant experiencia aesthetic that the

101 Other independent publishers who focus on young or alternative poetry include: Calambur, Plurabelle, El Gaviero, Libertarias / Prodhufi, Igitur, Icaria, Baile del Sol, Amargod, Paginas de Espuma, Minúscula, La Poesía Señor Hidalgo, La Bella Varsovia, Llibres del Peixe, La Garúa, Ediciones Transhumantes and Maillot Amarillo (Operé 29). 102 Independent publishers and editors frequently support and back avant-garde and off the main stream artists and poets, both in Spain and Latin America, even without a capitalistic motive: “un particular modelo de editor cuya actividad principal se centra en la edición, difusión y distribución de publicaciones culturales sin ánimo de lucro, y que mantiene una actitud de independencia con respecto al mercado convencional. Es al mismo tiempo un ejemplo de autogestión, vanguardia y edición alternativa frente a la globalización de las grandes empresas editoriales.” (Gónzalez ). 104 believed to lack an innovative spirit. For these poets, anthologies functioned more as a theater to stage a personal vision or the proposal of ideas rather than an instrument of canonization –at times these anthologies were even self-published–, and which featured poetry of an individual schism, “Poesía sólo para poetas, ruptura, margen, élite, lenguaje ensimismado, culturalismo enciclopédico, pura autorreferencia, lector iniciado, construyen un horizonte donde resuena de manera emblemática el esplendoroso verso.” (El sindicato). By the mid to late 1990s, the poets of difference were to be further backed by reputable critics and poets alike who defend this same anti-systemic position, including Miguel d’Ors, Miguel García Posada, Miguel Casado, Pere

Gimferrer, Carlos Bousoño, José Luis García Martín and Victor García de la Concha. The ideology of diferencia in particular, was finally consolidated with the landmark meetings of La diferencia posible in 1995 and was followed by Nuevas tendencias literarias in 1996. The members of diferencia, though never wholly unified, remained a symbolic artifice which was sublimated throughout those strata that were fractured from the discourse of hegemony. It was from this point onward that the poetic canon or statu quo began to be dismantled, even deconstructed, and a decade of difference begins to achieve a more unified vision.

As the winds of literary change arrived to Iberia and the inexorable evolution of contemporary sensibilities was assimilated in contemporary literary society, so too would this eventually drive even the poets of experience into a shift in poetics and ideology. This change would initially manifest itself towards a differentiation that sparked an internal rupture and aporia within their ranks, eventually leading to the publication of the more radical anthology 10 menos 30 (1997), compiled by Luis Antonio de Villena, and later see the same derivative themes revisited in La poesía de la experiencia (2007). Iravedra would comment on the apparent dissolution of the concrete aesthetic and lack of adherence to hitherto canonical poetry of

105 experience: “el concepto se ha desleído y perdido entidad al desdibujarse unos rasgos distintivos

(referencialismo, narratividad, anecdotario biográfico…) en los que muchos de sus cultivadores han dejado de reconocerse.” (157). These contemporary poets of experience –who melded the texts with an aesthetic which began with Gil de Biedma’s approbation103 of Langbaum’s The poetry of experience. The dramatic monologue (1957)– would eventually arrive at their own difference, or heterodoxy, which “sobrevive ahora bajo una apariencia más heterogénea de lo que pudo parecer a simple vista.” (Bagué Quílez 52); even bearing in mind that there was a modicum of aesthetic overlap between the poets of experience and the other in certain instances104.

Both center and periphery –that is, poets who versified throughout the end of the 20th century– begin a kantian synthesis into an era of differences at the dawn of the 21st century. That the most recent and youngest of poets of the 21st century have germinated with a keen understanding of literary difference and have been at liberty to choose their own unique poetic path, is not an unforeseeable conclusion to a period of time immediately prior that was known as a literary tiempo de bonanza: “estos poetas jovenes forman parte de este sistema como usuarios, beneficiarios y administradores desde su nacimiento como escritores, y han crecido observando y experimentando este "tiempo de bonanza" socio-cultural.” (Operé 36). Luis Antonio de Villena has catalogued the texts of the most recent poets as of this writing, those broadly recognized as the poetas del tercer milenio –whose publication begins roughly around the years 2000 to 2010– in the anthology La inteligencia y el hacha (2010); a title which signifies their stark break with

103 Gil de Biedma, in his text “Sensibilidad infantil, mentalidad adulta”announces his admiration for Langbaum’s work as “el mejor estudio que conozco acerca de los especiales problemas que la creación poética suscita a partir de la ilustración.” (50). 104 Iravedra posits that there existed some degree of aesthetic overlap (the genre of realism) between the center and periphery: “ No son siempre tan radicalmente diversos (menos aún tras su evolución reciente) los productos estéticos de los poetas de la experiencia y de algunos de los ‘otros’[en los que entrarían nombres tan dispares como los de Sánchez Robayna, Jorge Riechmann, Antonio Colinas, Jaime Siles o Blanca Andreu], por más que así lleven a pensarlo sus reflexiones teóricas sobre el género” (Realistas y los otros 102). 106 the previous traditions105. Even in the financially difficult times after Spain’s economic crash of

2008, these young and talented poets –a list which goes well beyond the mere handful distinguished in La inteligencia and similar anthologies– have had access to sociocultural benefits (for professionalization, support, etc.) that previous generations lacked, and even at an younger age106. This institutional support more easily allowed for individual artistic expression and diffusion throughout a multitude of venues and media, and eschewing concern for a union of hegemony. They have immediate contact with a globalized world that permits reading and influence from any literature, are personally detaching themselves from the concepts or characteristics of the polemic idea of “poetic generations”, and they are able to weave traditional and avant-garde poetic sensibilities at their whim. The end result is no doubt a nigh infinite variety of “differences” between these young poets, not unlike those that preceded them in the

1980s and 1990s. As Operé argues to this respect, “La escritura de estos poetas es diferente, en ocasiones radicalmente diferente (…) aunque todos ellos sienten formar parte de un mismo momento cultural marcadamente ecléctica y plural que supera las fronteras españolas.” (39)107.

The vindication of poetry without a center, fragmented and free of salient conclusions, is the prism that filters through the poetry of the new millennium108. These poets are perhaps

105 José Peña Rodríguez has also made reference to poets born between 1970 and 1985 as the Generación Poética de 2000. 106 As the young poet Elena Medel, now publishing poetry in the 21st century, states: “He podido estudiar y acceder a lo que he querido, he tenido libertad. Yo ahora vivo de lo que escribo, de los bolos, de las mil colaboraciones en prensa (…) y hace tal vez diez años una mujer poeta no podía vivir de su escritura.” (qtd. in Operé 37). 107 Bagué Quílez, through an analysis of Domingo Sánchez-Mesa´s anthology Cambio de siglo (2007), identifies various key characteristics within the most recent Spanish poetry: “1) la reactivación de un nuevo sentido de originalidad a través de la constante revisión de las tradiciones poéticas; 2) el afán de trascendencia, por medio de cierta aureola de misterio en el poema; 3) el despojamiento formal y la tendencia al fragmento; 4) la mayor exigencia en la conciencia del lenguaje; 5) la menor presencia del confesionalismo en la voz poética; 6) un trasfondo moral de nihilismo o de sereno escepticismo; 7) una renovada radicalidad en la práctica de la poesía; 8) un culturalismo vivido desde dentro; 9) la incorporación de nuevas estrategias de visualidad; 10) el enriquecimiento de la experiencia de la realidad, como consecuencia de la interrelación entre pensamiento y emoción, y 11) una conciencia teórico-poética menos polarizada que en las décadas anteriores.” (52). 108 Morales Barba elaborates on the fragmented nature of the most recent poetry: “Los años 2000 constatan más la aparición del fragmento y la falta de cierre en el poema, lanzado como texto abierto, o la paulatina difuminación de 107 indebted to their forerunners –“En general las poéticas guardan deudas con el periodo anterior.”

(emphasis added, Morales Barba 40)–, who embodied a poetry of differences much like their own. As a poet of a new generation, Juan Antonio Bernier cites the final disappearance of the specter of the hegemony of the poets of experience as occurring in the 21st century, “En la poesía, es en el siglo XXI cuando se esta dando una superación de la poesía de la experiencia”

(qtd. in Operé 208). Méndez foresees a breakdown of the agente-poeta, that is, the poet in search of prestige and notoriety, “en su forma social no quedan más que ecos de las fantasías propias de la forma pública anterior del agente-poeta, tanto a nivel de su prestigio, de sus particularidades como de sus signos estéticos distintivos.” (146).

The apparent diversity of Spanish poetry of the 21st century, while perhaps not wielding a strong centralized identity as the hegemonic discourses that came prior, has now become liberalized, democratized and individualized; the current poetic discourse blurs the boundaries of poetics and allows the inscription of myriad differentiated voices. The new millennium brings the digital age, a virtually pixelated potpourri, a globalized literature that is echoed in digital journals such as El coloquio de los perros and La dama duende; daily reading blogs such as those by Vicente Luis Mora, Manuel Vilas and Santos Domínguez; areas of visual experimentation found on the pages of Mercedes Díaz Villarías, or ancillary poetry blogs including Poesía Digital and Las Afinidades Electivas (Bagué Quílez 52). Returning once more to Juan Antonio Bernier, in his expression on the art of poetry of the 21st century found in

Veinticinco poetas españoles jóvenes (2003), comments: “No me interesa tanto conocer, saber, comprender, como sentir que conozco, que sé, que comprendo.” (223).

las antiguas corrientes de los últimos veinte años, que una mirada orgánica. (...) Con todo irrumpe la novedad formal de la elipsis y el texto abierto, la muestra del sinsentido desde cierta arbitrariedad de los signos (o cierta constatación de la "fragilidad del sentido").” (55) 108

3.6. The Poetry of the New Millenium

The poetry of the new millennium, however, is still being written and far exceeds the scope of this investigation. However, it serves to highlight a vital staging point at the end of the

20th century, as it allows for the articulation and reinterpretation of an “avant-garde” literary era that lies between the novísimos and the poetas del tercer milenio. This was the era of a generation of differences that transferred its epistemological and ontological essence into what might be the foundational poetics of what was to come:

“La poesía española del 2000 apenas se ha esbozado. Con todo parece mostrar que el

discurso del texto abierto y del fragmento (…) arranca en parte a finales de la década

anterior, puede ser considerada de manera provisional como una poética de lo

fragmentario y el descentramiento del poema.” (Morales Barba 52).

As the stage opens on the poetry of the new millennium, the polemics of hegemony and counter hegemony have slowly eroded and made way for a new pluralistic and egalitarian system of poetry, a synthesis of forms was finally reached through the clash and evolution of sociocultural apparatus and group ideologies: “la poesía que se asoma a la vuelta del siglo XXI parece haber superado –por pensamiento, palabra, obra u omisión– las controversias que caracterizaron la escena lírica de los ochenta y noventa.” (Bagué Quílez 68). Tradition and automization of poetry, a trait often linked to the current of the poetry of experience, has ceded to an omni-generic vision of poetry that is nestled within postmodernism and the constant renewal of différance. The

109 legacy of the revolution of the 1990s, the communion of differences and pluarity, transubstantiates into the poetic rhetoric of the 21st century,

“la década poética de los noventa, desemboca, en los aledaños del comienzo de siglo

(sobre todo a partir de 1997), en una visión no excluyente de la realidad poética, en la

búsqueda de zonas de encuentro entre poéticas diferenciadas y, sobre todo, en una clara

voluntad de convivencia en la pluralidad.” (Bagué Quílez 51).

Many of the poets of difference are still prolific in the 21st century, right alongside the new millennials, but their entrance into the field of poetry began decades sooner. By the late

1970s, the young poets who would make their impact felt during the 1980s, 1990s and even the

2000s commenced their forays into the poetic field of discourse, seeking to manifest their poetic aesthetic and vie for literary viability. They would have their formation phase within the confines of regional or even local poetic groups and associations –a paradigm that has shifted since the advent of the internet and social media–. Those poets who would become a critical success would be quick to align themselves with the greater regional poets of the preceding generation, in a cyclic legitimation of the dominant organism, or “un movimiento circular de autoabastecimiento y autopropaganda” (Gallego Ripoll Sobre las escuelas 2).

During the 1980s and 1990s, various (althusserian) state apparatuses of the fledgling autonomous communities of the new Spanish democracy would show interest in the arts and poetry, including universities, journals cultural centers, associations, literary prizes and awards, ateneos, etc. These apparatuses would generally select a poet (or group of poets), who was socioculturally relevant and ideologically compatible with their agenda, and would eventually

110 function as a literary icon for that region or “oriundo de la propia Autonomía.” (Gallego Ripoll

Sobre las escuelas 3); the elected would find themselves engorged with a bounty of symbolic capital and notoriety (as was the case with the poets of experience in Granada)109. The grouping of poets by their regional affiliation (an arbitrary and pernicious, yet often selected method of categorization) and their link with state run beneficiary organizations lead to the initial poetic sculpting and formations of various amorphous “schools” of poetry.

Adherence to these schools, their ideologies or aesthetic principals was, for many poets of difference, temporary at best and outright rejected at worst, as it signified a stifling uniformity and poetic reductionism:

“una uniformidad que elimina la complejidad de lectura cada escritura, desde su

singularidad, propone; pero también reduciendo su alcance a peculiaridad local,

provinciana. De ahí el evidente rechazo de sus supuestos integrantes a aceptar ese

término (hostil) a las generalizaciones de la crítica que desdibuja la característica de lo

poético.” (Canteli Vigon 3).

Rather, these categories can be thought of more as foundational fields of influence, a blossoming phase towards a flowering of multiple significations. Though serving as a small, overgeneralized and incomplete sample of the varying regions and their fragmented poetry, it is nonetheless a taste of the diversity. Moreover, this heterogeneity is symptomatic, or even endemic, to the

109 Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a Spanish poet would focus on these sources of capital as a form of subsistence (among other forms), some even benefitting quite substantially and lucratively; “Since poets are less likely than novelists to receive income from the actual sales of their books, they are also more dependent on governmental and quasi-governmental sources of income, including money from literary prizes, lecture and reading fees, and direct grants from foundations or institutions. Many poets also hold university or government appointments. (…) The combined income from such sources can be quite substantial for a poet in official favor. Official support for the arts in Spain is fairly generous, and the result is that poetry can be a quite lucrative career for anyone who is tapped into this pipeline.” (Mayhew 57). 111 postmodern sentiments110 which ethereally raged throughout the Spanish zeitgeist which, unlike yeatsian “aristocratic” ideals of poetry, features multi-coded and pluri-semiotic characteristics that are iconic of contemporary society and its literary production.111

Poets from these regions would eventually splinter off in the 1980s and 1990s into their own derivative differences112 and, following the proposal of Vicente Luis Mora, would lead to a poetics of “singularidades”, or what Sánchez Robayma deems to be a “literatura de las excepciones”, or the “diáspora estética” of Prieto de Paula, or even a “poesía del fragmento” according to Iravedra, or perhaps what Antonio Enrique ironically calls the “canon heterodoxo”, or host of other signs that have already been alluded to (milenarismo invertido, literature of freedom and so forth). Whether announcing works of genuine originality or bloomian palimpsest, these sobriquets are attempting to encase the diverse and unipersonal movements of poetry found throughout contemporary Spain. There exists ample criticism that expertly reviews each strand of poetry, meticulously defining their aesthetic characteristics, as well as form and content. However, this study will not linger indefinitely on the myriad and differentiated poetry and poetics in contemporary Spain, nor is that the primary directive, but instead will demonstrate a basic radiography in order to make clear the diversity of significations and discourses. These published poets hail from every autonomous community of Spain and are comprised of different ages, genders and socioeconomic positions, and likewise, they also take varying stances in regards to their poetic and ideological positions.

110 Operé details the postmodern condition as it pertains to Spanish poetry at the end of the 20th century, a diaspora of cultures independent of hierarchy: “La contradicción inherente al Postmodernismo lleva a un espacio donde no hay unidad, ni coherencia, ni resolución, por lo que se da de manera frecuente la coexistencia de géneros y la desaparición de jerarquías, potenciando lo local y marginal. Por ello no hay un concepto homogéneo y único de Cultura, sino que hay culturas, a pesar de que el impulse capitalista que lleva al consume masivo trata de homogeneizar los gustos y preferencias de los individuos.” (47). 111 An almost innumerable (more than 14,000 at the time of writing) number of poets who demonstrate this global plurarity are recollected by Fernando Sabido Sánchez at this webiste http://poetassigloveintiuno.blogspot.com/. 112 112

What follows is a non-exhaustive list of different contemporary Spanish poetic

“tendencies” that include poets that have reached some critical recognition in the the late 1990s and 2000s, or “las diferentes tendencias que conviven en el espacio de la postmodernidad”

(Iravedra Realistas y los otros 103): poesía practicable (Jorge Riechmann); poesía entrometida

(Fernando Beltrán); poetas críticos such as those found in Enrique Falcón’s Once poetas críticos en la poesía española reciente (2007); the poetry of afterpop (highlighted in Afterpop. La literatura de la implosión mediática (2007) as a spiritual sucesor to the novísimos); the realismo posmoderno that is “la democratización de la belleza y la desacralización de los tópicos románticos sobre la poesía” (Oleza 39); the ficción poética of Alberto Santamaría; poesía postpoética (or poesía después de la poesía) of Agustín Fernández Mallo and Francis Fuyuyama, poesía de conciencia expressed by the poets of Voces del Extremo and the group marked by the anthology Once poetas críticos en la poesía española reciente (2007) compiled by Enrique

Falcón; poesía elegíaca (or expresiva) of Felipe Benítez Reyes, Francisco Ruiz Noguera, Juan

Lamillar, José María Micó and others; the poesía de la intensidad honed by Carlos Marzal,

Vicente Gallego, José Mateos; the irrationalist poetry of Miguel Ángel Velasco; naturalist poetry of Antonio López and Jordi Doce; neofigurative poetry of Álvaro Valverde, Arturo Tendero,

Carlos Alcorta and Ragael Fombellida; the aforementioned poetry of experience which includes

Álvaro Salvador, Ángeles Mora, Jon Juaristi, Antonio Jiménez Millán and Luis García Montero; the poetry of realismo sucio –the American movement introduced to Spain via Roger Wolfe–; poesía del desconsuelo de Jorge Riechmann, disciples of the avantgarde traditions after sesentayochistas such as Joaquín Pérez Azaústre and José Luis Rey; the nuevo simbolismo found in poetry of Luis Muñoz and later the poets of Veinticinco poetas españoles jóvenes; the so- called generación desolada of Lorenzo Oliván and Eduardo García; neorromanticism of Javier

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Vela and Antonio Colinas; poesía entrometida de Fernando Beltrán; poesía minimalista of

Abraham Gragera; poesía posromántica of Carlos Pardo; the poetry of protesta social taken up by Manuel Rico, Tomás Sánchez Santiago or Alicia Bajo Cero; the poetry of crítica del lenguaje of José María Parreño, Miguel Casado, Chantal Maillard, Olvido García Valdés and José Luis

Morante; poesía figurativa, antipoesía, poesía metafísica and so on and so forth.

Gazing into the giant maw of contemporary Spanish poetry, one particular variable stands out as relevant: differences. This characteristic, analyzed through the lens of literary Darwinism, proves the survival and evolution of Spanish poetry by wary of an endless flourishing of poetic discourses: “the augmentation and restructuration of a repertoire by the introduction of new elements, as a result of which each product is less predictable, are expressions of an innovatory repertoire (and system).” (Even-Zohar Studies 22). Though the poetry of contemporary Spain may be fragmented, in the vein of Jean-François Lyotard, it is in fact unity and consensus that is the real danger to human freedom of expression, whereas fragmentation and decentralization is both desirable and inevitable within a postmodern system. While unity is sociocultural inhibition and the delegation of power in the hands of a few, difference and fragmentation form the backbone of freedom of expression, though concomitantly, this leaves the stylistic and conceptual bases of a poetry of difference difficult to chain together other than to revert to “El sentir general, y unánimemente aceptado por todos sus integrantes, es que la literatura de la diferencia no es una estética, sino una pluralidad de estéticas.” (Palacios Guzmán 3).

As the poetry in the margins is radical, different and inherently stubborn to codify, then perhaps all that remains is simply différance as its only viable, yet fittingly amorphous, characteristic. It may follow then, that a deceptively and decidedly ambivalent moniker such as poetry of difference becomes both a reminder of the rebellion against the hegemony of the other

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(difference) and a reference to the poetic plurality present within contemporary Spanish poetry

(different), while purposefully withholding any demarcation of a concrete identity or signification –after all, meaning in différance is always continually deferred–113. The poetry of difference hosted the expansion of a literary genre beyond its borders and into a new millennium; a broad poetic dialogue that became intergenerational and interterritorial, and that recognizes the uniquely singular hybridity of each actor and their contribution of renovation and rupture within the community of contemporary poetry of the periphery:

“la existencia de un espacio donde coincide el vigor y la salud de un género literario, que

se sigue cultivando y que sigue incorporando nuevos creadores, con la existencia de un

lenguaje poético múltiple, con todo tipo de gamas y de propuestas (…) es decir, la

constatación de la existencia de una práctica social, justificada en sí misma, con los

meanismos necesario para su pervivencia.” (Méndez 145).

Democratization, liberalization and a sense of postmodernism took the poetry of difference from within the poetic field of the late 20th century to begin the breakdown of hierarchy and tradition into a multisocial and polysemic expression that is the end product of a heteroglossy of individuals expressing themselves through the system of poetry. One can

113 Employing the terminology of “poetry of difference” is a means of deleting the compartmentalization an entire generation or decades of poetic activity and, on the contrary, it is meant to demonstrate the crossroads of heteroglossal poetic currents in an epoch in contemporary Spanish poetry that is emblazoned by difference and functions as a bridge between the hegemonic poetry of the 1980s and the new generations of the 21st century. If the idea of generation is a means of homogeneity, or the “supresión de diferencias” (Canteli 5), difference is the postmodern opposite, the destruction of a logocentric thought pattern, and what was once considered the invisible, marginalized, other in the previous two decades would be become the showcase of the multitude of poetic voices populating the varying regions and peripheries of the Spanish nation. The words of Miguel Casado echo strongly in regards to the creation of literary generation and is that which “la crítica de poesia española es en vez de un instrumento de comprension y analisis, una cadena de topicos infundados, un mecanismo de condicionamiento y deterioro de la escritura poetica" (Para un debate 133). 115 envisage the period of poetic production immediately following the democratic transition as analogous a tremendous genealogical tree, branch stemming from branch and ever blossoming into a greater presence of self.

This is not to take away or devalue the ability to represent the individual structural and epistemological identity of a particular poet or their works, when in fact “La salud del campo poético actual va por ahí, en la constatación de la existencia de un amplio número de sujetos que deciden expresar opiniones y contar sus cosas a través de las claves enunciativas de este espacio.” (Méndez 146). However, creating a totalizing philology of that which can be understood as a “poetry of difference” in the poetic field of the late 20th century exceeds the scope of this investigation. In its stead, reaching a conclusion for the hypothesis of difference will be obtained by analyzing the work of three distinct poetic voices, each suffused with a unique voice, and representative of distinct ideas or areas of diferencia (as portrayed by Federico

Gallego Ripoll andJuan Carlos Mestre ). Through the analysis of these authors and their works, one will arrive at a synthesis in the fin de siècle Spanish poetic field, that is, their individual reconciliation of a new poetic paradigm.

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4. Federico Gallego Ripoll and the Invisible Poet: From Darkness to Light

“Yo sé que existo porque tú me imaginas.”

– Ángel González

4.1. Formation, Insularity, Disillusionment, Exile and Rebellion

La palabra poética siempre es primordial: ni precisa ni utiliza explicación. La palabra poética cae o brota o empapa; mana desde su propio centro y no es importante ni no importante. Es lo que es. Y decide cuándo se da, y cómo, y a pesar de quién, y en qué modo ha de escribirse el poema. Ella manda. La palabra poética siempre es exenta. No acata servidumbre ni dispone de andamio. (…) Escribir es encender hogueras (…) La Poesía habla con la voz del desconcierto. La poesía se inventa a sí misma mientras se escribe. A veces se sorprende al contemplarse reflejada en el espejo de su propia expresión escrita, porque la poesía es lo que existe un instante antes de su concreción en la palabra, y el hueco de color complementario que se advierte si apretamos los ojos con fuerza un instante después de que desaparezca. Acontece cuando el hombre le es propicio. Es un don de sí que precisa nuestro don de ser, nuestra aceptación y complicidad, el gesto de nuestra mano, nuestra mirada. La palabra poética funda al poeta, lo fundamenta, lo justifica. (Gallego Ripoll, Por vivir aquí, 41).

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Federico Gallego Ripoll, a poet and painter of a stark individualism and vitalism, is a native of quixotic land of La Mancha, born in Manzanares, Ciudad Real, 1953. His poetic trajectory begins in the same decisive decade as many other avant-garde poets, the 1980s (the so- called transitional era) , and includes the following works: Poemas del Condottiero (1981), Libro de las metamorfosis (1985), Crimen pasional en la plaza roja (1986) (recipient of the Premio

Adonáis”), Escrito en No (1986) (recipient of the Premio Castilla-La Mancha), Caín (1990),

Tarot (1991), Tratado de Arquitectura (1991), Ciudad con puerto (2001) (recipient of the

Premio Barcarola), La Sal (2001) (recipient of the Premio Feria del Libro de Madrid), Para entrar en la nieve (2002), Quién, la realidad (2002) (recipient of the Premio Jaén), La torre incierta (2004) (recipient of the Premio San Juan de la Cruz), Mal de piedra (2005); Cantos prófugos (2006) (recipient of the Premio Ciudad de Irún), Los poetas invisibles (y otros poemas)

(2007) (recipient of the Premio Emilio Alarcos); Un lugar donde esperarte (2008), Dentro del día, acaso (2011) (recipient of the Premio Ciudad de Badajoz). This investigation will track this poet parallel to their poetic projects in order to reach an understanding of their difference and place in the field of poetry of the new millenium.

In this particular case study, Gallego Ripoll is seemingly on an eternal quest of poetic reinvention, one of finding his own unique and unaffiliated voice in the sea of the contemporary

Spanish field of poetry. An initial influence can be derived from the irrationalist aesthetic , with a clear interest in the experimentation of the poetic language and code. There is likewise an allure of the surrealism present in the works of Federico García Lorca (including other poets from the

“generations” of ‘27and ‘50) and other intertextualties can be traced from the popularized avant- garde novísimo movement of the 1970s. From those formative years, Gallego Ripoll found influence in successive readings that brought his poetic work towards a more essential,

118 linguistically bared, poetry. This poetic stream would be highlighted by a central figure that captured the young Manchegan poet’s imagination, José Ángel Valente (literarily evident in

Gallego Ripoll’s early works). This would be followed by the recurring influence of María

Zambrano’s philosophical works, and the writings of Paul Celan, San Juan de la Cruz, as well as of other lesser known poets, including María Victoria Atencia, Clara Janés and Olvido García

Valdés. Even early on, Gallego Ripoll similarly found intellectual engagement with Buddhism and Taoism, whose practices and teachings can be subtly gleaned throughout his poetic discourse. Thus his poetic background and formation can be said to embrace a vindication of a poetry that is neither excessive in its totality nor quotidian in its elemental nature. Instead, for

Gallego Ripoll, the poetic rhythm or flavor does not have to be fantastic, marvelous or even coherent (unconsciously abiding by some of the categories of Labrador Méndez) as, in essence, this poet undertakes a personal quest for an idiosyncratic ideal of poetry, for the exalted ineffability of poetry.

Gallego Ripoll poet did not have a formation in literature or philology as did other poets in the generation that published during the 1980s and 1990s, a trait that many applied to increase their symbolic capital by associating themselves with prestigious academic institutions114.

Furthermore, as a child of the arid plateau of La Mancha, his younger years left telling marks in his creative endeavors. This was a historically poor land, that had just escaped an oppressive era where every last thing had an inherent, useful, value, and the lack of material goods endowed the gift of quixotic imagination; to peer into the essence of La Mancha is to understand the lives of those who reside there. The physical and psychological “isolation” of La Mancha, as Miguel

Casado would postulate in Mar interior (2002), functions as yet another indelible characteristic

114 To compound matters, unlike the prominent universities such as Granada that “created” the poetry of experience, the region of La Mancha (not Castilla La Mancha) did not have a particularly powerful or systemically influential university. 119 imbued into Gallego Ripoll’s poetic ontology. The striking landscape that inspired Cervantes is one of a bare nudity, bathed in light, surrounded by the smells of olives and grapes and marred by an oppressive heat, yet all the while functions as a nostalgic omnipresence in the poetry of this region. In addition, he grew up reading poets of the surrounding regions –Lorca, Machado,

Hernández, etc.–115 instead of the most figurative avant-garde, seeking the most fundamental aspects of poetry. Moreover, it was contemporary Spanish artists including Alfonso Carreño,

Eladio Cabañero, Ángel Crespo, José Corredor-Matheos, Juan Alcaide and Sagrario Torres, that had a decisive influence on him: “me quitaron el miedo a volar y me ayudaron a alzar mi mirada y a reconocerme en la vecindad de otras voces y otros ámbitos.” Gallego Ripoll, Personal interview.)

Following this antecedent, Gallego Ripoll would continue to reinvent the poetic self as both life and poetic influences melded his creative output in a diachronic mode. One might find evidence of this in the early influences of San Juan de Cruz and the poets of Castilla La Mancha, as well as Zambrano or eastern religions. Through constant reinvention and a malleable and omnivorous poetic style, Gallego Ripoll unconsciously distances himself from any singular cohesive poetic field, system or group and thereby starts to harbor a resentment towards the literary doxa, or “game,” that would lead to his inevitable abstention from the poetic field in the late 1990s. A hint of this behavior is imprinted in an allusion found in the poem “Todos desembocamos” (Gallego Ripoll Dentro del día 15), which, aside from carrying an intertextual relation to the ever famous poem by Jorge Manrique, points to his own decision to stray from literary circles. While some poets align themselves purposely to confluxes of power for the acquisition of symbolic and economic capital, content to take literary assignments from editorials

115 An aggregate list of influential artists and creators, indispensable to a young poet from this specific region such as Gallego Ripoll, might include the playwright Francisco Nieva, the painters Gregorio Prieto and Antonio López- Mozo, the poet Eladio Cabañero, and many others. 120 or be at the whims of hegemonic groups, they are likely to forgo the independence of their own poetic identity. Gallego Ripoll builds his poetry as its own isolated territory, without a need to vindicate any other individual, a difference that is one’s own.

Thus Gallego Ripoll becomes the owner of what could be called (in a literary utilitarian fashion) a “voz personal” (Gónzalez Ortega 4). The forerunners are recognizable –Juan de la

Cruz, Lorca, Aleixandre and Valente– but that truly difficult to achieve unique voice is a keyhole to “su singular personalidad, total independencia y siempre capacidad de asombro.” (Gónzalez

Ortega 4). Forged from the heat of La Mancha, Gallego Ripoll’s poetry harbors a tragic impulse, a luminous vitality that revels in the primordial, while simultaneously frustrated with the limits of human expression and language. The central elements in Gallego Ripoll’s early work include

“la imagen de desposesión o pérdida de identidad, neceesaria para penetrar la realidad y el desboblamiento progresivo con que se objetiva la falta de totalidad del ser” (Gónzalez Ortega 5), which in this case –drawing hypothesis from his work Caín– can work as an allegory to the death of Cain and the assumption into the identity of the other. From this point onwards, Gallego

Ripoll becomes a poetic omnivore on the other side, a heteroglossal, individualistic poet.

Beginning with Libro de las metamorphosis, the works of Gallego Ripoll have been on an exploration of the complex personal self of the poet, one whose poetic motto is to create as a potter, receiving the poetry that comes organically rather than that which is required by a group or convention.

The auto-relegation away from the poetic field by the turn of the 20th century and a defiance of the hegemonic circles of influence indicates the latent difference of Gallego Ripoll, one which can subsequently be echoed by various critics, most notably Beatriz-Ferrari, who use the term no-clónicos (an abstract literary category that coincided with the rise of the poetry of

121 diferencia and is applied to others, including Mestre, whom may be now associated with an idea of difference). On the other hand, Mari Pepa Palomero in Poetas del 70 (1987) originally included an exhaustive list in the appendix that catalogues all the poets born between 1939 and

1953 who had received recognition in mainstream anthologies and journals. This list excludes a number of notable, culturally relevant and prize winning poets, including Gallego Ripoll himself, as well as José Luis Alegre, Amparo Amorós, José María Bermejo, Pureza Canelo, Antonio

Hernández, José Infante, López Casanova, Moreno Jurado, Ana María Navales, Justo Jorge

Padrón, Paloma Palao, Pedro de la Peña, Sánchez Rosillo, Emilio Sola, among others. A conclusion that can be drawn from this event is that the exclusion of the subaltern was a tangible factor that contributed to the elevation of those with the benefit of an elevated sociocultural position:

Cualquiera, con un mínimo de honestidad, no tendría que hacer mucho esfuerzo para

concluir que algunos de estos marginados (…) son más importantes que no pocos de los

glorificados. Esta es una ocasión, de las tantas, para la ironía o el regocijo. Lo que suena a

coartada, después de todo inocentísima, permite establecer que las tendencias subrayadas

no se encuentran solas en el mundo. Se eliminan los que desmienten el criterio

uniformado y demuestran la pluralidad, que sale averiada y, por descontado, la intención

de los antólogos. (Martos 3)

Much like Castellet’s (in)famous Nueve novísimos -an indication of who crystallized in a literary sense - is an arbitrary barometer at best and, in a worst case scenario for those on the sociocultural fringe, serves only to propagate and further legitimize those who are already established within the wellsprings of power. In the case of poets such as Gallego Ripoll, who for

122 reasons discussed labored his craft as a marginal figure, the artificial seeking of a date or generation by critics who claim to be “discoverers” serves no better purpose than to dispute and sequester the scarce symbolic capital or cultural power to a specific group within the field.

Even a decade later, Jose Luis Martín similarly began to anthologize the poets of the

1980s (roughly around the nascent period of “La otra sentimentalidad” and this action, coupled with that of other critics who housed similar aims, was a driving force in the emergence of the movement known as of “La otra sentimentalidad” and the agglutination of the poets of experience in the primary strata. The text of Luis Martín echoed studies of the 1980s and 1990s, which all seem to elude commentary on the “others”, their marginal contemporaries. While the conflict of critic/anthology binary wore on, whichever poet was not included in an anthology was functionally rendered invisible: a theme that Gallego Ripoll (and contemporaries) would take up in Los poetas invisibles and other works. The fights to create the “next” hegemonic poetry of that particular decade, or the following one, at times even spurred territorial battles, where each autonomous community supported a specific candidate, and the propagation and manufacturing of anthologies and literary journals attempted to meet these ends. The creation of the poet-critic, a hybrid figure quite prominent in the 1980s, was met with some criticism of its own, although their alliances generally bastioned poets of their own tendency or poetic line. These critics would help establish the main poetic discourse of the post-novísimo era, and, furthermore, consecrate their works. Those in the literary margins (as is the case with Gallego Ripoll) who espoused their own sense of difference, were forced to forge their paths by other means.

It was during this volatile time at the beginning of the 1980s that Gallego Ripoll commenced his literary journey, accompanied by a fresh and vigorous poetic language of experimentation and profusion, which would win 2 prizes and recognition early in his literary

123 career. Having first installed himself in the region ofBarcelona in 1981, Gallego Ripoll published his first book of poems with Rialp in Madrid, titled Poemas del Condottiero: paisajes para una batalla (1981). This book would go on to receive the then coveted prize Adonáis that same year, and was consequently the winner a year after Blanca Andreu’s De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall (1981).”116. This action accrued a modicum of symbolic capital for

Gallego Ripoll, though much of this prestige would be short lived, due to his already marginalized state. A Manchegan poet residing in Barcelona and writing in Castellano was not favored quite as much in a region that was receiving hefty funds from the state (especially in the arts) for the revitalization of of the Catalan/Valencian languages after having been brutally repressed under the Franco regime.

Thus Gallego Ripoll suffered from the sociocultural problem of “double insularity”, living in Barcelona as a non-Catalan writer and having no direct ties to the university or state systems in that region, he would be forced to forge his own, much more arduous, path. The books of poetry following his first are not quite as well received by Barcelona’s literary critics, as they did not meet the state criteria of bolstering the regional discourse, and this would in turn create a negative ripple effect for the successive poetry of Gallego Ripoll despite any objective quality that it may have possessed117. His unique expression and indifference to the field doxa that brought upon an “insularity” (103 Martínez) which likewise affected countless poets who also utilized castellano while residing in communities with with co-official languages; therein

116 The prize Adonáis (“Premio Adonáis”) is awarded annually in Spain and serves as a barometer of the who’s who in the poetic world. Although there is no direct economic compensation for the prize, the symbolic capital can be quite significant and has tagged now well-known poets for literary success (even if they were simply runnerups): José Hierro, Claudio Rodríguez, José Ángel Valente, Antonio Gala, Ángel González, Antonio Colinas and even Antonio Gamoneda: “Sea como fuere, lo cierto es que Adonáis ha venido aportando a la poesía española del último medio siglo nombres que han resultado esenciales y señeros entre nuestra mejor lírica, y ello con unos criterios de generosidad y apertura encomiables.” (Millán 12). 117 Unbeknownst to Gallego Ripoll during his formation in Barcelona, a literary creator writing in Castellano at that time was seen with some disdain by militant culturalists: “a los autores que escribían en castellano se les consideraba miembros de un supuesto ejército de ocupación lingüística” (García Jambrina, Una poesía plural). 124 lay the difficulty of recognition within the region, due to the new found importance placed on a particular language from the point of view of the cultural and political institutions (obviating those on its margins). In the already limited sociocultural space available to a poet, after the consolidation of the autonomous communities, the linguistic nationalism of the 1980s became all consuming. Despite these elements against him he is mentioned by Santiago Martinez of the literary journal Zurgai (a top editor in Barcelona during the 1980s) as one of the “seis poetas tan representativos de los últimos años de poesía en Barcelona.” (Martínez 105), describing him as a poet who writes “Una poesía magmática, con una gran riqueza léxica y expresiva que se resuelve a través de una imaginaria sorprendente.” (Martínez 105).

Realizing this factor and finally coming to terms with its consequences by the end of the

1980s, Gallego Ripoll decides to embrace his marginality (as many of the poets of difference are likewise involuntarily placed in similar positions in this epoch for similar reasons). Rather than engaging a futile and ultimately fruitless battle with the hegemonic state and literary systems, he instead continues on with his personal inertia, seeking publication venues, prizes, and so forth on his own accord. However, to further complicate Gallego Ripoll’s poetic discourse, this decade houses the rise to power of the poetry of García Montero and, consequently, the poetry of experience. This was a poetry that was largely accepted by the bourgeoisie population (generally, those in the culture of the urbe), forming a close familiarity with the general Spanish readershipby fabricating a quotidian emotionality, anecdotes, and espousing a concrete, personal and direct language –all in accordance with a predetermined and defined structure and premise–.

As detailed in previous chapters, the poetry of experience had strong ties with influential publishing houses such as Hiperión and Visor, while other publishers were languishing in a state of subalternity and disregard for a time. Publishers such as Visor (and by extension Tusquests,

125

Barleby, etc.), even into the 21st century, become a darwinistic barometer that can ultimately decide those in line for the “canon” in the poetic field and thus opening the door to the poetic

Elysium or Parnassus. This phenomenon was not limited to publishers, but also the cultural supplements of the major newspapers, such as ABC, El Ppaís and El mMundo could be employed as effective tools of cultural hegemony. In the case of Gallego Ripoll –especially during the poetry of experience’s influential clout in the 1980s– , he did not meet the requirements to participate in these prestigious publishing venues.

Instead, marginalized poets like Gallego Ripoll would find asylum by allying themselves with independent publishers, whose expressed goal was to outmaneuver the hands of power

(such as the editorial Pamiela in Navarra). One such influential player in the field of contemporary Spanish poetry was the now defunct DVD Ediciones. DVD Ediciones was founded and run by Sergio Gaspar and Eduardo Moga, and tended to shy away from publishing the “mainstream” aesthetics for the more than fifteen years of its active life, and perhaps its closing can be attributed to the new acceptance of difference in the turn of the 21st century.

Although they continued production into the 2000s, after their closing a spiritual successor was to be found in blogs (such as Las afinidades colectivas), digital volumes, and other internet- based productions that would further democratize and revolutionize the poetic system and push away incumbency. In the meantime, Gallego Ripoll joined the ranks of publishers such as DVD,

Lógica and later Bartelby, during his time in Barcelona.

Regardless of affiliation, the poets who began their journey in the 1980s in different territorial areas, as well as those who were marginalized by systemic design or choice, begin to voice their dissent by the early 1990s. In this regard, as a direct consequence of the meetings on poetry held in Naples in December 1991, Antonio Jiménez Millán drafted Un engaño menor: las

126 generaciones literarias (based on Philip Larkin’s 1955 work The less deceived). This text depicts an era in Spanish poetics wrought with a “deceptive” system of literary generations that has warped literary history in favor of those discourses that seek only to fertilize their own existence118 (namely through the power of academic circles, acquisition of hegemonic literary venues, rigged prize juries, monopoly of state sponsored capital, and so forth): “La aplicación sistemática y, a veces, torpe del método generacional ha desfigurado la historia de la literatura contemporánea, al menos en nuestro país.” (13). According to Millán, what was once a principal element for an important cultural criteria, is now a system whose only pretext is the simplification and successive impoverishment of a form that serves to latently mask economic opportunism and, moreover, create an easy venue for mass propaganda. In such a tight-knit and restricted literary space as is poetry, the major tools of this seemingly exploitative and corrupt system are the academic critics and anthologies119. Thus Millán posits that this feverish phenomenon of non-egalitarian classification is one of the causes of reactionary uprisings by the poets left by the wayside: “Contra la fiebre clasificadora han reaccionado los mismos poetas.”

(Millán 13). Perhaps Millán’s work may be one of the many reasons for the rebellion of differences, and spurred Gallego Ripoll’s response to the issue that same year.

In 1991, much like Millán and countless other poets120, Gallego Ripoll published a treatise entitled El laberinto transparente, a work that highlights the habitus of the field of poetry

118 On the invisibility on those not arbitrarily selected by an anthology Luis Jiménez Martos posits: “Las antologías constituyen antesalas del paraíso y archivan las documentación del Parnaso. En la última década ha crecido este género y no parece que vaya a disminuir su número, porque, además, la poesía seleccionada en conjunto atrae más lectores que la de un solo autor. Su conveniencia no admite vuelta de hoja, como tampoco la sospecha de que los que no figuran en tales resúmenes se hallan condenados a la sombra absoluta. Vendrán críticos que presuman de recuperaciones.” (3). 119 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán ironically stated in Nueve novísimos poetas españoles: “las antologías sí que se leen. Creo que a partir de ahora sólo escribiré antologías.” (60). 120 Julio Llamazares, for example, writes on the subject: “Sorprende comprobar cómo la pasión onanista de los críticos, roto el andamiaje conceptual y pedagógico de las tendencias, las generaciones y los grupos, ha llegado al descubrimiento (¡) de la diversidad como único denominador común entre los poetas españoles menos viejos” (qtd. 127 directly from the gaze or perspective of a non-hegemonic poet. Though not to be taken without an inherent distrust of a personal subjective view, some interesting notes can be glossed from this particular text. In one particular case, he furthers Millán’s thesis on the exploitative classification system of the contemporary poetic field of criticism. The elevation of an elite few for reasons of selective power, mutes the voices of those in the margins, or even those have taken a variegated literary path. The text continues by stating that “La Crítica, así, no analiza la realidad, sino la fuerza y la promueve hasta llegar muchas veces a pretender dirigirla silenciando cuanto se aparte del utópico “buen camino” elegido” (Gallego Ripoll 87). The (un)intended effect of categorical criticism in contemporary Spain served to render a large faction of poets invisible or into a state of otherness121. Gallego Ripoll’s difference (or the case of the many poets who did not follow the path of the righteous hegemony, the “buen camino”) alienated him, and those in similar positions, from the poetic field in the 1980s and 1990s.

The concern of criticism and generations was compounded by the relatively new state of autonomías, not only in the sense of the geopolitical distinctions of democratic Spain, but how it additionally applied to poetic groups throughout the country (e.g. the poets of experience stemming from the university system in Granada). Even Gallego Ripoll, speaking years before

Blanca Andreu, Alicia Bajo Cero, the movement of diferencia and countless others made their stand, prefaced a conscious discontent for the hegemony and their forceful rein to the fields of power: “la poesía nueva mayoritariamente aceptada por la crítica, es la que se escribe, se difunde in Millán 4). Furthermore, Felipe Benítez Reyes has a similar tone: “A los poetas nuevos no sólo se nos exige que escribamos buenos poemas, sino que además nos inventemos unos rasgos generacionales” (qtd. in Millán 4). 121 Another selection further expands on the state of otherness: “La lectura generacional de la poesía coadyuva a la falsificación de la realidad, primero, al limitar la nómina de poetas perdurables a los nombres que el antólogo o el crítico consideran adecuados para demostrar la viabilidad de una teoría determinada, lo que generalmente obliga a buscar coincidencias en las fechas de nacimiento o de primeras publicaciones, o en los rasgos básicos de sus tendencias (no de la función social de sus particulares poéticas), con lo que queda automáticamente excluido cuanto sin responder al paradigma marcado mantenga un sentido independiente, al margen de su calidad objetiva, así como aquellos poetas descolgados del grupo principal por haber nacido unos años antes o después.” (Gallego Ripoll “El labertino” 88). 128 y se apoya desde puntos cercanos a los –dicho esto sin grandes alharacas- círculos de poder.”

(89). Just as the movement of diferencia waned, unaware of the literary changes just on the horizon of the new millennium and the revolution they had inadvertently sparked, so too would

Gallego Ripoll succumb to a great disillusionment with the literary system that ultimately lead to his decade-long literary silence.

Poetry in late 20th century Spain, while popular with the public to a relative degree, nonetheless remained in a state of low total publication and diffusion (as discussed in previous chapters) and therefore power was more easily consolidated by way of endogamy. No more was this plainly signaled than by the proliferation of cultural supplements that were generally coordinated by select groups that nourished each other until they were symbolically satiated or their power was superseded. Those supported by the state, poets turned critics (or vice versa), nepotism (power breeding power), hegemonic poetry, anthologies, critics as judge and jury

“inventing” new monochrome generations, were all the target of invectives, diatribes and denouncements from the poets of the late 1990s. However, Gallego Ripoll was not one that

(barring a few exceptions) directly challenged the status quo nor joined its ranks, yearning instead for what was for him an unnamed poetry, one that is ontological, primordial, individual, non-binary, different; a disautonomous poetry that separated him literarily and socially from directly collaborating with the field of poetry, or in his words “en las que cabe todo ese cúmulo de individualidades que configuran los laberintos de la poesía comprometida y de la poesía epigonal, mintras el viento de unos cuantos años más no colabore en separar el grano de la paja.”

(90). The ideal was a poetry that creates its personal narrative, a covenant with the individual poetic act, excised from the divisions caused by this field’s literary and chiasmic “civil war” for poetic legitimacy. Taking a final page from the notes of Gallego Ripoll (in a new historicist

129 fashion), the poet paints his own poetic habitus as open and freeing, removed from a necessity to please a class or hegemonic entity: “una nueva promoción variopinta que no se cuestiona revolucionar el mundo, que siendo protagonista estudiantil de la transición democrática, que no hubo de escribir contra dictador alguno ni preocuparse de eludir tal o cual censura; una promoción abierta a la lectura de otras poesías.” (89)

Inevitably, there were other people, groups and institutions with similar ideals, and thus

Gallego Ripoll eventually found himself a member of the so-called “Circle of Bauma” or círculo de Bauma (which at the time was a well-known tertulia in Barcelona). The meetings and colloquiums of this particular group of individuals gave way to Cuadernos de poesía Bauma – and the seed of the aforementioned DVD Ediciones122– whose central tenants included the publication and dissemination of marginal and subaltern poetic figures. There were also journals and publications he participated in, including Rosa Lentini’s Hora de poesía and Simetría, which evolved into the still present Igitur. Despite occupying an underrepresented sociocultural position, Gallego Ripoll’s multiple years in Barcelona would be extremely productive literarily.

In addition to fruitful publication of various books of poems after Poemas del Condottiero into the 1990s, he formed ad hoc relations with other poets of varying ideological and aesthetic stances within and outside the autonomous region. These poetic alliances allowed Gallego

Ripoll, alongside Jordi Vidallonga, Concha García, and Eduard Sanahuja, to form the “Aula de poesía de Barcelona” in the early 1990s, an institution which has expanded its outreach even to this day. The creators of the “Aula de poesía” had the explicit goal and lofty hope of integrating all the poets of the Catalan area, regardless of language, status, or affiliation. They intended for

122 DVD Ediciones was disbanded due to the economic crisis which struck in 2008, but one may wager that the inculcation of the attitude of individual difference into contemporary 21st century poetics may have displaced a the need for publishers of the marginalized poets that was no longer needed to be filled by those poets traditionally selected to be published in its journals. 130 a free play of individualism throughout a singular nexus of expression which would make visible the invisible, and breakdown binary systems of power that suppressed the voices in the margins.

Moreover, to achieve these ends, the group sponsored and held literary discussions, created poetic events , gave public readings, inviting poets of varying backgrounds and styles, , in order to bring light to poetry and systemic issues that had been obscured through the 1980s and 1990s.

However, while their intentions were egalitarian and laudable (though, like the poets of diferencia, perhaps overly idealistic), what slowly occurred instead was the parasitic intrusion of poets who used the Aula as springboard for achieving greater notoriety and accumulating symbolic capital, rather than a mode of freeing literary revolution. Additionally, given that the genesis of the Aula was that of decisive schism of the binary nature of one group versus another, they also quickly lost the interest of sensationalist journals and critics, who were only interested in cataloguing the clash of poetic hegemony and counter-hegemony of that era. Both of these factors contributed to the decline of the Aula and to the further disillusionment of Gallego Ripoll in regards to the contemporary Spanish literary field. The last work he would publish in

Barcelona, at the height of his involvement with the literary field, was Tratado de Arquitectura in 1991.

Consonant to the notions of difference, Gallego Ripoll encountered a great deception within the notion of literary groups, and more precisely the creation and dissemination of a centralized authoritative, hegemonic and suffocating figures and movements during the 1980s and 1990s. Due to the perceived caliber of his poetry, his idiosyncratic aesthetic, and his ideology in regards to the role of the marginalized and “othered figure”, Gallego Ripoll was sought after by the movement of diferencia during its formation. The ideals of diferencia seemed to echoed that of the Aula, and the Manchegan poet was invited to attend the Ateneo de Sevilla

131 in 1994 (their second national convention), where a manifesto was drafted in opposition to the dogmatic “official” literature of the era. This was the first and only time Gallego Ripoll would directly associate himself with an anti-systemic poetic movement. In fact, he never officially defined himself as a poet of diferencia, despite being lumped into that category by critics (at times refered to the poetas no-clónicos or numerous other erratic categorizations).

It was the oppressive insularity, and the distaste for the literary clash of the counter hegemony, along with a marked disillusionment with what he felt was the symbolic destruction of the poetic group he had founded in an attempt to embrace difference, which caused Gallego

Ripoll’s self-exile to the island of Mallorca. In this gambit, the Manchegan poet removed himself from any specific literary group or current, ignored the “rules of the game” and abandoned the symbolic-literary war that was manifesting itself in the field of Spanish poetry.

This move would be punctuated with a decade long, self-imposed, silence in the publication of poetry, during which Gallego Ripoll struggled with personal and existential crises (though all the while continued to write privately). At this point he would come to terms with considering himself a true individual poet, as mentioned in the opening verses of Ciudad Real poesía última

(1984) –a premonition of what was to come lyricized close to a decade before the creation of the

Aula–: “No creo en las poéticas, ni en los grupos, ni en las generaciones. Me siento individual ante mí mismo (…) No me propongo nada, ni me pongo obligaciones, ni me trazo caminos.”

(Gallego Ripoll 8).

For Gallego Ripoll, Mallorca was the warm embrace of his insularity and difference. The island became a metaphor for both his poetry and his life. Removed geographically and consciously from the hectic battles of the literary field and clashes of poetic circles, he was at liberty to pursue his own path: “Los círculos no me liberan, me encierran. La idea de isla me

132 refuerza el concepto de independencia y de libertad. Sólo la cortedad de miras y la ruindad

‘aíslan’ realmente a las personas.” (Gallego Ripoll, Personal interview.). Mallorca continued to be the home of the Manchegan poet but even so, his rebellion against the status quo, the difference against the hegemony in poetry, continued to burn silently beneath the surface.

However, a complete disassociation was not forever possible, and a decade later Gallego Ripoll returned to the literary field, with a refined poetic sensibility and discourse that granted him new publications and accolades; but this time around, he remained altogether disinterested in the plays of the fields of power relations. Luis Jiménez Martos referred to a certain variety of poets in the 1980s and 1990s that toiled in the metaphorical underground, submerged beneath the drowning waters of the saveur de la journée upper stratas, original and revolutionary, conscious of their anonymous invisibility:

Hay una poesía sumergida que acude o no a los concursos, a las ocasiones de cara o cruz,

con la esperanza de salir de lo anónimo. Los críticos están en la obligación de atenerse a

la cera que arde aquí y ahora. Repiten los perfiles del panorama, valoran, dictaminan,

extienden pasaportes. Domina la tarea una generosidad que evite complicaciones. La

poesía sumergida bracea, pugnosa por abandonar ese mundo. (…) Algunos originales

recién leídos poseen ese carácter de testimonio de la época y rebeldía ante la misma que

pudieran constituir el retorno a las realidades preocupadoras y de signo socializado. (4)

The poems composed while in Mallorca rang with a certain ideological and epistemological testimony of the age (certainly the opening poem and even the title of Los poetas invisibles are the most telling) whilst still meandering down a path of unique difference. This

133 path was one of solitary independence, both by design and necessity, a rhythm obliged to be attended.. But indeed, the return to the field was in no way a mistake, as by 2001 it was more evident that the Manchegan poet was gaining recognition: “Federico Gallego Ripoll, considerado ya entre los grandes poetas actuales, por sus publicaciones, sus premios y especialmente por la calidad y profundidad de su lírica” (Martínez 105). However, to a select few, this may have come as no surprise, as illustrated by an interview with the renown Gloria Fuertes published by

El mundo in 1995. When asked her opinion about the contemporary use of the sonnet form, she had this to say: “No, claro que no. He escrito sonetos. Los sonetistas de ahora no son poetas.

Poeta es Federico Gallego, un chico que tiene poemas que son la leche.” (qtd. in Villena, “Poesía es decir”). Having glanced at the fundamental poetic trajectory and habitus of Gallego Ripoll, a more precise understanding of his poetic gestalt should now be available, and thus one can delve briefly into the structural elements of his poetry.

4.2. Verses from Barcelona or the Labyrinth of Identity

Federico Gallego’s time in Barcelona draws opens his literary discourse and will run its course until the early 1990s, when he exiles himself to Mallorca. This initial literary era encompasses the publication of his first seven books of poetry: Poemas del Condottiero (1981),

Libro de las metamorfosis (1985), Crimen pasional en la plaza roja (1986), Escrito en No (1986),

Caín (1990), Tarot (1991) and Tratado de Arquitectura (1991). From here, a plurality of structure and signification emanates as he participates in a cultural intertextuality, traveling from

Barcelona to countless cities in Spain to share poetry and experiences with other poets of this era.. Among these external influences, one finds some threads of lorquian roots mixed alongside

134 that of his heritage of La Mancha, all concocted through the poetic act. Gallego Ripoll’s poetic structure during this phase is mostly figurative, as there is a definite effervescence for language and signs –a trait that will certainly diminish as time goes on–; he is at first a metaphorical sculptor who feverishly shapes his creation from a mold. At first blush, however, the Manchegan poet was not initially allured by the siren song of poetry, but rather by painters (and their paintings), with whom he frequently met while residing in Barcelona. Gallego Ripoll also lived near art museums that he would visit during his leisure time, and frequently found himself touring different galleries to meditate on what impression their paintings bequeathed onto him. It was in one of these scenarios that his first book of poetry was born, based initially on an ekphrastic experience with a particular painting entitled Visión del Condotierro.

Poemas del Condottiero is divided into three subsections: “Paisajes para una batalla”,

“Tres letanías” and “Sonetos”. Each subsection is keeper to numerous ekphrastic poems inspired by the work of da Vinci (as recreated by Carlos Buró). As a general premise, the poetic narrative glosses the figure of a deceased warrior, insisting upon the emotions of pain and love provoked by observing him. Moreover, the theme of war as a metonym carried on by the symbol of the condottiero becomes the vertebrae of the continuous text-structure of the book. Man in this book becomes the condottiero, however, he serves to bring only pain and the destruction of harmony, and in the case of war, the poet asks himself rhetorically: “¿Es precisa la guerra / para que crezcan altos los trigales?” (Gallego Ripoll Condottiero 10). This work is rife with oneiric language, alongside ruptures of the impressionist and even symbolist aesthetics, all structured behind a frequent use of hendecasyllable –which at times dons allusion to Lorca (the repeated use of symbols such as moon and knives) and faint intertextualities to Alberti’s Sobre los

ángeles (1929)–. Furthermore, a deeper analysis reveals a tendency for playful irony, toying with

135 the phonetics of language, searching for creative lexical forays, and flourishes alliteration, paronomasia and other literary tropes.

Poetic change can be traced in Libro de las metamorfosis, where every poem begins with the last verse of the preceding poem, in this fashion creating an infinite, circular, chain (wherein the last verse of the last poem is the first verse of the first poem). As with the gnostic law of eternal recurrence, for the poet the only element that continues as a constant is a destruction that can only be temporarily contained by the logos: “Sólo me permanece la destrucción y sigo / agrupando palabras donde habitar, palabras / que devuelven al aire lo que nunca seremos.”

(Gallego Ripoll Metamorfosis 15). Gallego Ripoll plays with the poetic emptiness, trapped within angst and doubt, in search of a destructive spirit that can only be appeased if “Somos felices si no destruimos / Incomprensiblemente” (Gallego Ripoll Metamorfosis 15). This poetry exudes a sense of nihilism, appealing to a primordial human existentialism: “Ni siquiera suicida, ni siquiera. / Sólo nada absoluta. Una gota / de nada al otro lado del camino.” (Gallego Ripoll

Metamorfosis 16). At a crossroads between elevated lyricism, intense emotion, and a descent into the quotidian self becomes strikingly soaked in heavy signification: “preparar el café, leer la prensa / y olvidar el paraguas en la panadería. / Buscar trabajo o buscar pistola.” (Gallego Ripoll

Metamorfosis 16). Suicide, doubt and confusion drive the poetic vision towards a fragmented and labyrinthic experience.

The following book, Crimen pasional en la plaza roja was also the recipient of the

Premio Adonáis as well as the Premio Castilla-La Mancha. These poems were composed feverishly on the eve of a poetry reading in 1984 to which José Hierro would attend while in La

Mancha. Crimen pasional catalogues the happenings of four individuals, each of whom operates as alter egos of the poet’s imagination, and shows varying sides of what transpires within the

136 poetic narrative. These four individuals are the metaphoric flesh and soul of the poet, symbiotic vessels of the subconscious: “Los objetos que habitan mis poemas / hablan mi idioma, o no, / son lengua mía / o yo soy el dialecto que ellos piensan” (Gallego Ripoll Crimen 82). The “red plaza” is a symbol for the heart, and the consummation of the symbolic crime, the suicide of the poetic voice. In this work, there is a logical continuation of the auto-aggressive nature encountered in his two previous books, especially Libro de las metamorphosis. The interior altar of the heart sacrifices the alter ego, a ritual of auto-immolation occurs, and there is a falling into a great abyss of doubt, “Yo me voy muy tranquilo hacia la muerte, / sin jabón ni pijama / Sin tristeza.

Sin Duda.” (Gallego Ripoll Crimen 49). Language continues to lend importance to the musicality of the verses, the rhythmic structure and linguistic harmony. Love and self-reflection a on his own vital reality (cognoscente of the reality of the multiplicity of the ego), spans a continuum of sensation and perceptions, constantly evolving through a nexus of memories: “Sé que estoy inconcluso, / que no empiezo ni acabo en cuanto dejo / registrado y vivido, / que me trenzo y destejo y me convivo / asesinando / otros de mí” (Gallego Ripol Crimen 39).

Similar factors flow into the fourth book, Los escritos en no, such as the division of the self, the presence of the mirror as a sign, fragmented personality (a hallmark of postmodernism) and the multiplicity of personalities that coexist within the text: “Y alguien abre la puerta, / y soy yo quien me quita el abrigo, / quien me besa la frente” (Gallego Ripoll Escritos en no 11). There is a marked shift to the quotidian, a tendency towards the refinement of expression, and a sense of the spiritual and the essential. In Los escritos, language acquires a conversational fluidity, with shortened verses and grammatical brevity, an economization readily apparent in the employment of the Japanese haiku, for example. The verses indicate a search for a new or renewed state of being, surpassing the anxiety of metamorfosis, and reaching an internal peace or

137 even nirvana; “No es necesario ser para existir” (Gallego Ripoll Escritos en no 18). By submerging himself directly in the emptiness, the vacuous, what remained was a state of gratification: “Dejas de ser y tomas / el sombrero de frutas del verano. / Te muestras, desde la nada, alado, / cubriendo todo el cielo, / rebosando las copas, los cipreses, / los metales, los labios.

/ Escrito en no sobre la cal del aire. / Eterno. En plenitud.” (Gallego Ripoll Escritos en no 18). If perhaps everlasting joy was still impossible, at least the poetic self came to a realization of evidential, nirvanic negation as an affirmation.

If not similar in theme, Caín is likely one of the darker book of poems in Gallego Ripoll’s poetic repertoire. This work puts on display the concealment of unrequited love, and the impotence against a deep relationship that cannot be corresponded. As such, the only recourse is the sublimation of the intense emotion –the sublimation of the frustration– imagining this other person as a biblical figure. Caín is a poetically expressive work, filled with stylistic figures such as anaphors, enumerations, and metonymys. The intense wordplay longingly seeks a lost and dreamlike identity, and seems to mimic flesh and blood, almost alive. The poet appears unto himself (a repetition of the mirror symbol) contemplating an internal crime. There is a duality that conditions and mystifies both the poet and the book of poems: “He matado a mi hermano y todavía / sobrevivió / tras abatir sobre la hierba un nombre / -el suyo, el mío- (…) Me ha matado mi hermano.” (Gallego Ripoll Caín 55). Death is instead regeneration, as the poetic speaker survives the synthesis of Cain and Abel and undergoes a metamorphoses by way of a bloodless schizophrenic clash within him; dramatic tension of agony and peace. The battle that takes place over the ink and paper is now a reminder of life: “Yo nuevamente yo, espada alzada / contra el nuevo enemigo, / contra el viejo enemigo que redime / su cuello ya instruido en la derrota. /

¿Quién vence ahora, quién bifurca / la yugular contraria, quién aprieta los pulsos? (Gallego

138

Ripoll Caín 62). In the labyrinth of the ego, the poetic reality of the poet is not tangible and monolithic, but rather “una difusa multiplicidad de identidades en las que el ser se reconoce y dispersa.” (González Moreno 171). The multiplicity of identities, a telling sign of differences, serves to solidify the questions of this era of Gallego Ripoll: “¿Estoy en mí o en ti? / ¿Soy tu palabra o tú mi lengua? / ¿Quién espiga al existir del otro?” (Gallego Ripoll Caín 63).

The penultimate work published while in Barcelona is titled Tarot and contains twenty- one poems in the form of structurally experimental sonnets. The opening lines of the prologue break down the schematics, linking each sonnet with a specific poet: “Y así, jugando a ser orfebre, partiendo de la básica estructura del soneto, llegué a la única y diferenciada raíz de cada poeta (…) veintidós sonetos confesos de herejía.” (Gallego Ripoll Tarot 12). Using the twenty one “Arcanos Mayores” (Major Arcana) of the tarot deck, each card is dedicated to a corresponding poet (living or deceased) that the poetic voice deems to be in some way linked to a major arcana. For example, Gallego Ripoll attributes The Magician to Vicente Aleixandre,

Alfonso Carreño to The Empress, Blanca Andreu to The Tower, and so forth (while also personally drawing corresponding paintings). These references are no accidents, as every one of the twenty-two figures, in varying fashion, holds great influence for the poet creator: “creadores pasados o presentes de los idiomas que han sido mi idioma” (Gallego Ripoll Tarot 13). Each experimental sonnet attempts to recreate (yet deviate) from the poetic aesthetic of those whom they correspond, a mimesis which begets rupture. The heterodox sonnet, is a unique, Dadaistic manner to metamorphose and renew this literary form; “pero que dignifica el género y lo trasciende” (Gaspar 170).

Roughly one year later, Gallego Ripoll’s final work in Barcelona is published, Tratado de arquitectura, and marks the closing of the era in Barcelona. Tratado is ordered into three distinct

139 sections: “Proyecto para la cúpula de Santa María de Fiore”, “Del sueño de Bernini” and “De la sed y la arena”. The texts concentrates on the labors of architectural creators by recreating

(within the text) the experiences produced when venturing throughout varying artistic styles.

This work is host to peculiar punctuation and a flowing rhythm of images –“Círculo de estelas”

(Gallego Ripoll Tratado 33)– and one notes a return to basic themes, such as love or light as symbols of the difficult, but desired. Abrupt enjambments bestrew the verses alongside the use of a vocabulary related to the natural world. There is a more restrained presence of images , though strong contrasts and dense expressiveness are still apparent.

Even in an embryonic state, this poetry of Gallego Ripoll foreshadows dominant trends in his future works. There is objective evidence that the young Manchegan poet intended to unleash heavy symbolism into his verses, starstruck by the language of his forerunners and ready to deploy all that he literarily had consumed. Like the novísimos immediately preceding him,

Gallego Ripoll was a cultural omnivore, sprouting an eclecticism that lead to a poetry rich in metaphors and images, comfortable with language. Thus there was a unity in his books of poetry and a poetic zeal, wherein everyone was a unique and particular entity. Every word was laboriously searched for and utilized, leading to a diffusion of language that became acoustic and audible, even oral. This time of poetic zeal fashioned the individuality of Gallego Ripoll, which was harnessed to eventually become a poetry of constant evolution and metamorphosis, as was laid bare even at a the outset of his poetic discourse: “el propio autor asegura que su poesía podría ser diferente en cada momento, como respuesta a sus diversos estados de sensibilidad y de percepción.” (Gómez Bedate). This phase in Barcelona fluctuated between the quotidian and irrational spheres and transitioned later on to a poetry much more contained and synthesized, where the poetic form is briefer and there exists an underlying logic that both organizes and

140 illuminates the poetic language. The latter is the poetry that came to exist after Gallego Ripoll, like Cain, destroys his pervious poetic self, choosing to exile himself to Mallorca and undergo a new metamorphosis.

4.3. Silence and poetry beside the sea

In the ten years of public silence following his cultural break from Barcelona and the poetic field123, socially entering a marginal position, his poetry changes and evolves. The poetic fundamentals are sharpened, the superfluous laden elements are cut out, a more mature and rigorous application of form is applied, and there appears a newfound respect for the text as it relates to the response of the reader (no longer solely for the ego) which validates the space of the other through the reflection of the self (an awareness of the collective consciousness). Once the verses are consumed by the essence of the reader, only then is the journey of the poetic sign truly complete124. The more common themes found in Gallego Ripoll’s poetry after Barcelona is an auto-analysis that seeks escape from excessive intimacy, a renewed literary enjoyment of language, a focus on an exterior world, a reflexive tonality and a continuing search for an existential identity within doubt, as punctuated by the verses, “Mientras el mundo dude / el mundo seguirá existiendo” (Gallego Ripoll Quién 32).

The 1990s brings a surge of crises, one of a personal existential nature (evidenced in La sal) and the other of one spurred by the field of poetry itself (as per Los poetas invisibles). The

123 This break happened shortly after the publication of Tratado: “La larga y contrastada trayectoria poética de Federico Gallego Ripoll (…) se vio temporalmente interrumpida tras la publicación en 1991 de su Tratado de Arquitectura” (González Moreno Turia 345). 124 For this poet of differences, a student of the 1960s and 1970s, the postmodern and thus the death of the author is subconsciously quintessential, a residual influence from the democratic transition period as the poet himself has mentioned: “considerando que una vez que escribe un poema éste deja de pertenecerle, porque pasa a propiedad del lector, quien se adeuña de la emoción que el poeta siente al escribirlo.” (Muñoz 77). 141 move to Mallorca indicates a complete removal of all social and cultural links, including friends, family, reunions, groups, countryside and even the poets of Barcelona. The sole survivor of this ordeal is but poetry itself. However, while the (inevitable) return to the literary field after a decade of self-imposed exile is daunting and fraught with initial struggles, Gallego Ripoll appears to be beckoned by the field as his two works are quickly taken up by publishers in 2001 and both receive important literary prizes125. The works in this era include: Ciudad con puerto

(2001), La Sal (2001), Para entrar en la nieve (2002), Quién, la realidad (2002), La torre incierta (2004), Mal de piedra (2005), Cantos prófugos (2006), Los poetas invisibles (y otros poemas) (2007) and Un lugar donde esperarte (2008).

One of the first works to appear after the decade of silence is Ciudad con puerto

(recipient of the Premio Barcarola). In this book, Gallego Ripoll exhibits a stunning bedazzlement for the poet’s new home and sends metaphorical gratitude to the city of Palma de

Mallorca for having accepted him. On its pages are transcribed poems of pure celebration that each progress from the morning to evening (divided into three parts) on one, nameless, day in this port city. The poet assembles the verses based on the historic and cultural memory of the city, however once the cast is removed, the resulting reality is instead fictional, fragmented and totalizing: “ponerte a la espalda la memoria / cogida por sus picos, / bien anudada para / que no se te derrame la tristeza / ni el día nuevo, al despuntar, te rompa / ese compás con el que siempre espera / que le cantes.” (Gallego Ripoll Ciudad con Puerto 25). In bold contrast to the poetry of an early period, as the festival of emotions and light in the seaside city carries on throughout the verses, the concept of a magical symbolism, both sensual and mystical, becomes readily apparent.

125 There is significance in this action, as prizes for poetry in the 1980s and 1990 were markedly less competitive and funding was greater than in the turn of the century (especially in regards to the 2008 crisis). 142

La sal (recipient of the Premio de Poesía de Madrid) appears the same year as Ciudad con puerto, and analogously demonstrates a renewed sense of poetic vitalism and vigor: “Tras esos diez años de silencio editorial, que no de silencio creativo, la voz de Federico Gallego reaparece ahora de nuevo, revestida de su personal intensidad lírica, en este último poemario”

(González Moreno Turia 345). La Sal ushers in a new epoch in the trajectory of Gallego Ripoll, ending years of suffering and pain, including the death of his brothers to whom the book is dedicated. From that magma appeared the lyrics, fermented and nurtured by a decade of experiences and sensibilities, in short, “un poemario de amor donde no importan personajes sino el estado de ensimismamiento que éste provoca” (López de la Manzanara). The verses are balanced in comparison to that of the young Gallego Ripoll, and they hold a transcendent and entrancing spirit that are vehicles for love and light: “yo vibro detrás del mar / como si hubieras / trizado / un látigo de azul y peces / contra mis labios. / Nunca habrá mar bastante / que me aleje de ti. / (…) El sol se alza de plata / porque el mar es azul y el sol se alza / desde el mar.”

(Gallego Ripoll La sal 47). In addition, the sea is for the poetic voice a vessel for liberty, while the La sal (a palindrome for salt) holds the signification of a curing. Structurally, the text abounds with hendecasyllable and alexandrine verses, amidst a narrative that is existential and surreal. However, the defining leitmotif that elevates above the text is light: “Tiene forma la luz, peso y volumen.” (Gallego Ripoll La sal 8). Light, in this context, represents the carnal and the mystical, “Es la luz quien da forma a las cosas / y quien mira es quien da a luz la luz / La llama horizontal. Piensa la luz / que empieza a ser pensada por la luz.” (Gallego Ripoll La sal 30). In

La sal one can account for five primordial elements –salt, sea, words, light and memory– which fundamentally make up human existence. In this, more recent, poetic discourse, poetry becomes essential, with an authentic intensity that brandishes an inwardly focused poetic sobriety that

143 contrasts with the previous expressive form: “ser sólo / la combustión interna de las cosas”

(Gallego Ripoll La Sal 2).

Three titles follow the initial poetic outpouring of the Manchegan poet, Para entrar en la nieve, Mal de piedra and La torre incierta. The title of the former, Para entrar, pays homage to an eponymous poem by Antonio Gamoneda and is an exercise in absolute otherness. Atypical of his poetry, Gallego Ripoll writes through the lens of a woman, one composing a diary of being mistreated. Using the feminine point of view and linguistic pronouns, the authorial voice sublimates memory, experience and pain through the subject. The following work, Mal de piedra is further evidence to Gallego Rioll’s linguistic economy or reductionism; words fall off as poetry seems no longer a question of quantity. The individual poems are named after varying parts of temples around the world and are furthermore divided into five differentiated sections.

The essential signs encounter with frequency parallel those from La sal: the pronouns I and you, air, water, love, a desire for exuberance and a wish to express life and its indomitable persistence.

On the other hand, the poems of La torre incierta126 are arboreal, with each section intricately branching from a simple, fundamental idea. The lexical circumlocutions appear as polyptotons: “dame / lo que me asusta y amo y dame / lo que porque me amas / no me quisieras dar” (Gallego Ripoll La torre 25). There are also numerous anaphors, puns (or paronomasia), and etymological derivations. Again there is a search for bountiful existence and love, as language proves ineffective and leads to syntactic and lexical rupture, harking back to the avant- gardes of decades past. The image of the lighthouse compromises the five primordial segments

126La torre incierta speaks to the renewed vigor the poetry of difference in the 21st century: “Los últimos títulos de la colección Adonáiís son una muestra del vigor con que la poesía española ha entrado en el nuevo siglo. El primero de ellos, al que voy a referirme a continuación, es “La torre incierta”, de Federico Gallego Ripoll (Manzanares, Ciudad Real, 1953), quien ya obtuviera un accésit del premio Adonáiís en 1985, y otros como los premios Castilla- La Macha, Barcarola o Jaén.” (Antonio Sáez). 144 of the text: “raíz” (base), “baluarte” (bastion), “fuste” (shaft), “atalaya” (observation point) and

“linterna” (lamp). This book of poems is comparably serene, soft and tranquil, though with a metaphorical power that eschews quotidian language; in spite of the near complete absence of adjectives. In the opening poem of Baluarte, the authorial voice defines language in the following manner, “Eres el vuelo, el borde y la raíz. / Eres la ausencia de adjetivos.” (Gallego

Ripoll La torre 21). In a near poetics, poetry is defined elsewhere as the essence of the tower itself:

Esta torre quisiera levantarse / con palabras sencillas, / con piedras bien talladas / que

encajen, que acomoden / su tos y su cansancio, / que se acompañen y se compadezcan /

de manera discreta y casi firme. / En voz baja, con un tacto suave / ir alzando la torre /

con piedras de artesano / tomadas de la roca con respeto, / igual que las palabras.

(Gallego Ripoll La torre 15).

La torre leads on to what are potentially two the most critically important contemporary works of Gallego Ripoll, Quién, la realidad and Los poetas invisibles. The former, Quién, la realidad, recieved the Premio Jaén de Poesía in 2002 and was one of the works in this poetic era that had a decisive impact on the literary trajectory of Gallego Ripoll. By the early 2000s, though power in the cultural literary discourse of poetry continued to be nestled in specific sectors, it was clear that grip was beginning to loosen. Nowhere is this more evident than by the publishing house that selected to publish his work, Hiperión127 (which during the 1980s and 1990s was

127 The acceptance to this literary journal deonstrates the slowly breaking of the center: “Su variable cobertura económica viene a aliviar las escaseces de los poetas afortunados, y si esa suerte conlleva que se edite la obra ganadora mata dos pájaros de un tiro, o tres, porque un premio, a escala local, nacional o internacional, es'noticia y, por ende,esa publicidad constituye una excepción al silencio, que del mismo modo se atenúa en las críticas y reseñas 145

“reserved” for a certain type of poetry), an act that signifies movement from a secondary position and fundamentally indicates the petrification of the previous elite hegemony. In addition, literary prizes and poetic anthologies that had previously been compromised by external pressures and favoritism have now been ruptured and select poets of differentiated aesthetics and ideologies while still placing import on their poetic caliber (including this work of Gallego Ripoll).

As a text representative of this plural discourse, Quién is sustained by the philosophy of

María Zambrano, as the poet himself states in this regard: “¿Quién sostiene a quién, la realidad al ser o el ser a la realidad?” (Gallego Ripoll, Personal interview.). Imagination and metaphor are paramount here, and the work, in essence, eschews an implicit authorial voice. There is no fixed center, place, or verbal time; instead the very linguistic structure defines the plane of poetic being. Signs and signifiers are compressed and ripped asunder as they are subjected to a continuing transformative forced presented in previous works. In terms of the poetic essence, the text feels both classic and new, but neither one nor the other holds complete dominance. In addition, a strong sense of spirituality and deism abounds, though the vivacity of life and vitalism seems to trump all. However, the main theme remains the eponymous thesis and core; the omnipresence of reality, which alone creates the reality of the poem as “ese animal que puebla los silencios, / que habita / el hueco que dejan las palabras al marcharse.” (Gallego Ripoll

Quién 18). Words and musicality configure this book of poems, with a reliance on enjambments that breathe rhythm into the verses. A desire to create and love once again echoes brightly throughout the work of Gallego Ripoll.

de los suplementos literarios de la prensa periódica y de las revistas culturales, si bien la desproporción entre la abultada cantidad de volúmenes poéticos y la atención que reciben es patente.” (Martos5). 146

In between Quién and Los poetas insivibles is found Cantos prófugos. This work prefaces

Los poetas for the simple reason that it is a ballad to the “other”, the marginalized and supposedly “delinquent voices”, whose aim is to reclaim their voice and poetic space:

Cantos prófugos es un libro conveniente, diría que hasta necesario, para dar voz a quienes

no la tienen, para sacudir conciencias, para que la poesía reclame más allá de exquisitos y

«diletantes» el imprescindible papel de la palabra como arma cargada de conciencia

frente a la mentira, como revólver que dispara al silencio de la mordaza y hace brotar el

testimonio de la sangre; como fuego, en fin, que incendia la paz de los cementerios.

(Pullido)

Cantos prófugos –recipient of the Premio Ciudad de Irún– is a tale of exiles and battles (won or lost) which elicits the collective memory and consciousness of the reader. It contains eight long poems, each cataloguing unique circumstances, including that of Spanish artists and intellectuals after the civil war. This journey through historic infamy and human suffering also includes references to historical places and events such as the Second Punic War, Casablanca, Zama

Samotracia, Ramala, Dresde, Basora and Michoacán. The subject matter is not lite, as its verses contain the brutal extermination of innocents, the interplay of victims and executioners, the irony of blame and culpability of the latter, and the silence or invisibility of the former: “Suya es la culpa de lo que sucede. / Suya por no ofrecernos el cuello de la paloma / los ojos húmedos de sus muchachas” (Gallego Ripoll Cantos 39). The opening poem is titled “Sinaia”, the name of the first ship which carried Spanish republicans across the ocean to Mexico after Franco came to power. This poem serves as the narrative string which sets its sights throughout history to revisit

147 turbulent scenarios and landscapes. The verses are filled with rhythmic tonality, such as: “Los versos y los barcos se llevan la memoria / de lo que nunca fuimos pero fue nuestro empeño. (…)

/ Niños de tiempo eterno ¿dónde fue nuestra infancia? / ¿qué hicimos de nosotros? / ¿contra qué nos rompimos?” (Gallego Ripoll Cantos 13). In the case of the poem “Sinaia”, one encounters the Alexandrine poetic meter, rich in language and images, with a contained yet moving engagement with the tragedies of man and its respective victims. Memory, and coming to terms with the events of the past, is the only force capable of maintaining its presence going forward.

However, one particularly unique poem (“Mostar”) dives into a memory that is much more intimate, that of an individual exiled and forced to emigrate, who turns to a handful of cherries which, like poetry, are able to sustain the poetic persona indefinitely: “las acerco a mis labios con respeto, / comulgo la distancia, el aroma mestizo / de una supervivencia.” (Gallego Ripoll

Cantos 13). Through poetry, perhaps the redemption of the other is still possible.

A fitting continuation to Cantos is Los poetas invisibles (y otros poemas), which portrays a cover picture that tellingly reminds of a young Gallego Ripoll, but with concrete features reduced through minimalism. After having distanced himself from the significant sociocultural poetic groups (those affiliated with the major newspapers and their cultural supplements, such as

Babelia, El Mundo, ABC, etc.), the Manchegan poet had no critics by his side or support systems, and was thus rendered culturally invisible, fending on his own as an outlier in the contemporary field of poetry. Los poetas invisibles came about in part due to his experience with critics and the compromised literary prize system in Spain, a reality present even into the 21st century. The book has a total of forty-two poems and is divided into two distinct parts, “Terapia de grupo” and

“Autorretratos y suicidios”, with the poem “Los poetas invisibles” standing alone at the end. .

148

The first half carries a paradoxical tendency that plays with the contemporary field of poetry.

The schizophrenic diaphanous purvey of voices (“Un hombre equivocado”, El refugiado, La lavandera, etc.) speak in first person and present ironic dramatic monologues that are honeycombed throughout the verses and parody a popular poetic form. However, by intention and by design, the authorial voice instead assumes and shares the existence and suffering as its own, in this lyric-narrative game that projects an introspective heteroglossia instead of a traditional subjective exaltation. In the second half, the “I” pronoun retakes the stage and in a

Taoist disposition seems unbothered by the binaries of existence (good/bad, light/darkness, masculine/feminine, etc.), content with a path to harmony and equilibrium. Even invisibility and silence is a paradise, an Elysium, where poetic exuberance and vitality are realities far removed from the doubt of his youth: “Pero sólo descubren su invisibilidad –el concepto que el libro busca encuadrar de un modo implícito– cuando, tras la dispersión, recobran la unidad perdida en su exigüidad, en su apenas nada.” (Ángel Cilleruelo). Returning once more to the introductory poem, “Poetas invisibles” –the symbol of invisibility in this text becomes a beacon of hope for those marginal poets who continue to strive despite this status– is a nod to an end of an era, one of an acceptance of invisibility128 (marginality) with all of its implications and a final unflinching embrace of its inexorability:

Los poetas invisibles escriben poemas invisibles con palabras invisibles sobre cuadernos invisibles. Hay lectores invisibles Que les regalan sus ojos invisibles

128 The books of poetry of Gallego Ripoll generally offer a sample of this poet’s poetic discursivity, and in regards to his invisibility and the text; “Desnudo estoy en cada texto y no debiera / avergonzarme, / pues nadie en mí repara: / a nadie importa si me corto el pelo / o compré una camisa. / No habito más allá de estas palabras / que leo y reproduzco / plagiando su latido, / imaginando amar por cuantos aman” (Gallego Ripoll Poetas invisibles 73). 149

Y estantes invisibles Sobre los que descansan sus sueños invisibles. Reciben premios invisibles y aceptan las críticas invisibles que a veces subrayan la evidencia de su absurdo intento de visibilidad. Pero a nadie privan de su sitio, Su ventana o su columna; Nadie habrá de preocuparse de retrasar su camino por ellos. Porque también tienen vendas invisibles, Quirófanos invisibles Y sufridos enterradores invisibles Que, tras cumplir con su trabajo, Beben a su salud en tabernas invisibles, De regreso hacia sus casas invisibles. (Gallego Ripoll Invisibles 15)

4.4. Embracing the poetic invisibility; conclusions

Like countless poets selectively cornered into the margins at the end of the 20th century,

Gallego Ripoll has not achieved an “officially” consecrated or canonical position during these past few decades. However, despite his consciously adopted dissonance within the literary field, he has achieved notable symbolic capital and critical attention through his own constant work and poetic prowess. Los poetas invisibiles ends a literary era that finds the Manchegan poet coming to terms with his literary and sociocultural invisibility, as well as fostering a greater understanding of the manipulation of the field by the empowered classes. What was once confusion, doubt, angst and exile, have become light and the acceptance of his own unique, contradictory, path: “Creen que estoy confundido porque camino en otra dirección” (Gallego

Ripoll, Personal interview.). Neither does he stand alone in his principles, recognizing that difference has become a legion, a subconsciouslly united grand group of poets that follow Frost’s metaphorical The Road Not Taken, seizing the literary field by storm in the 21st century and

150 slowly toppling the established hegemony. Time in Mallorca has opened the gates to another poetic narrative that begins with the publication of the book Dentro del día, acaso and carries on through yet unfinished manuscripts composed in the 2010s.

Circumstances in contemporary Spanish literature have allowed for an invisible poetry that functions individually, writing in an eccentric individuality that forms solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, those who suffer in society. His poetry wells up from his own

“Garden of Eden” and it is characterized by a gratitude to poetry, an expanded sense of a mature self, nihilism in regards to the ungratefulness of existence, advocacy of the adherence to the pain/ embracing the pain that germinates from emotions, people, objects and so forth, a Buddhist sense of the lack of existence to be greater than existence, a poetic reflection on emptiness, transcendence, mysticism and a fundamentally bare and transparent style of versification. From this point on, due to the pressures of the poets and critics of the 1990s, the subaltern state was no longer such an oppressive hindrance on Gallego Ripoll’s poetic discourse: “De aquí en adelante, la producción de Gallego Ripoll va creciendo imparable y avalada por prestigiosos galardones.”

(Muñoz 77).

As a memoire to what has come before this point of renewal and understanding stands Un lugar donde esperarte, a poetic anthology of all Gallego Ripoll’s work from 1981 to 2007. This work reunites for the first time selected pieces of the voluminous work of the author , wherein he glances back to recognize and (re)present his poetic essence diachronically. The poems trace his time in Barcelona (from Poemas del condottiero through Tratado de arquitectura) and contain a robust and affected language, a piercing essence of a loss of faith, leitmotifs of doubt and melancholy and a painful rebelliousness: “Llegó el dolor y se sentó a mi lado. / Le di vino, me dio conversación, / nos repartimos la tarea y el pan.” (Gallego Ripoll Un lugar 75). Following

151 his trajectory, Mallorca becomes Gallego Ripoll’s exiled home, from which ten years of silence were broken and inaugurated by Ciudad con puerto and other works. In the poems of this latter stage, a concise elegance in versification unifies with robust vitalism and meditative themes.

Amorous or romantic ideals intermesh with memory and thought, all of which is molded and unified by way of a formally and linguistically mature authorial voice: “Por las noches / me despierta el sonido del mar / que suena por mis manos” (Gallego Ripoll, Un lugar 150). An included poem is simply titled “El poema” –extracted from Escritos en no– and functions as a capstone to Gallego Ripoll’s art of poetry:

Punto y coma, tris tras, ya la navaja sobre el papel rasura los signos insurrectos, recorta las patillas, equilibra el bigote y con llaves de alcohol cierra los lacios poros. Se mira en el espejo, como quien no, el poema; paga el servicio y deja generosa propina si no advierte la caspa ni algún que otro rasguño. Se despide en voz alta de los demás clientes. Y cruza la avenida creyéndose otra cosa. (Gallego Ripoll Un lugar donde esperarte 69).

One might very well imagine that the anthology served as closure to the previous chapters of Gallego Ripoll’s literary narrative in the margins. In a sense, it became time to explore a different path in a post millennial zeitgeist. Thus what follows is Dentro del día, acaso, a hallmark of the Manchegan poet’s discourse of difference in field of the 21st century. Dentro del día, acaso (recipient of the Premio de Poesía Ciudad de Badajoz) is the most recent book of poems publish by Gallego Ripoll. Within the eight poems, light and vitalism take center stage once more, choosing to focus on those eternal instances that resonate with human existence: “hay besos de regalo, / sorpresas, risas; / cada vez que respira / recoge su ración de primavera. /

Durante un pleno instante / llegamos a creernos eternos, a sentirnos / eternos” (Gallego Ripoll

Dentro del día 34). The positive forces such as vitalism implore the elevation of spirit and

152 reader, “el ascenso dulce de la savia / y el intento del vuelo” (Gallego Ripoll Dentro del día 34).

On the boundary of the intimate and the expressive, drawing an interior landscape sustained by sensibility and nostalgia, is born a poetry that emanates with a clear organic naturality. From an interior silence, the free verses and hendecasyllables add a tone of mysterious musicality. The theme of emptiness still abounds, though changed, as it reflects on creation and the absolute. The poet purposely distances himself from grandiose words and bombastic grammatical structures that supersede pure description, choosing to employ a conscientious and economically minimalist verse form.

Doubt and critical existentialism still speckle the verses –“de si soy quien evoca o soy el evocado, / de si soy quien escribe o soy lo escrito” (Gallego Ripoll Dentro del día 14)– as the authorial voice recreates and shares its memory in a search for a totality in being, a poetic destiny. This memory is not just the subjective “I” voice that emanates from the text but rather the ethereal subconscious, inheritor and indebted to forces which came before, inexorably linked in a great chain to being: “Yo escribo con palabras robadas a los muertos (…) Sobrevivo en sus voces; quienes me antecedieron / y no están siguen dando soporte a mi estatura / de hombre libre

(…) somos cabos del hilo de Ariadna” (Gallego Ripoll Dentro del día 9). Peace and liberty are envoys in the quest for light, discharging into the prism of life and desire are as one: “Si alumbro es porque sé que el amor permanece, / porque aún el alba existe tras la noche del agua” (Gallego

Ripoll Dentro del día 37).

Dentro del día is a pulse on a singular temporal plane, as evidenced by the title, one day that is both metaphor and metonym of eternity (as in the poems “Los niños del Pireo”). The only extant element universal is time, perhaps a day, offering infinite possibilities, even the return – with a childlike innocence– to poetry for the sake of poetry. By the light of the day everything

153 changes and grows, human experience is exhibited yet reduced to a state of insignificance – attended to by oft invoked philosophical solipsism within the poetic verses–. From the shows and darkness, death, melancholy and suicide, of Gallego Ripoll’s early works, the inherent light and breathe of desire of the poetic discourse give way to the only singular possibility, hope: “dentro del día, acaso, la esperanza.” (Gallego Ripoll Dentro del día 35). Therein lays a hope for existence and a hope for the renewal of poetic conventions.

Even by the relative success and poignancy of his most recent work –and especially after his retreat from Barcelona– Gallego Ripoll has continued his silent vow to not join nor participate in a literary group and continue on his path of differences: “Es otra cosa, porque ser poeta de algo implica tomar partido por algo, y eso no es mi caso (…) si yo no soy franco en mi poesía, cuando te metes en una corriente de poesía, te metes para ir a favor de la historia de otros.” (Gallego Ripoll, Personal interview.). However, ultimately, there is one group he has unknowingly sided with; the poetic clout of Gallego Ripoll does speak to a revindication of poetry on the margins, but specifically of poets from La Mancha, coming from a region that had

(for historical and social reasons) minor cultural influence in literature during the past decades..

The contemporary poets of La Mancha search for their essence now with that harsh, interior sea of an identity culturally forged in this unforgiving countryside where all is bared, creating incredibly tactile worlds from that emptiness. Federico Gallego Ripoll “es uno de los nombres cuyas obras sitúan a nuestra provincia como ejemplo puntero de la poesía actual.” (del Hierro).

Through his endeavors, he has impacted the course of poets in the margins, if even in the smallest way:

154

“Permanentemente reivindican sus raíces y llevan a gala ser manchegos, quizás porque

son autores que tuvieron que sufrir el desarraigo, todos tuvieron que salir, por diversos

motivos, pero siempre vuelven y aclaro que son poetas de carácter universal, con

importantes premios que jalonan sus trayectorias, cuyas voces y estilos son diferentes,

porque “no son poetas que coincidan”. (González Ortega).

Federico Gallego Ripoll is a poet of this same La Mancha, one who, despite his own personal insularity and imposed marginality, has published award winning books of poetry beginning in the counter-hegemonic period of the 1980s. However, critical reception of his work has been mired by the status quo, a characteristic that mirrors the fate of many poets of difference or those that followed their own less traveled road during the 1980s and 1990s. This lack of critical attention has likely dampened his national and international diffusion but certainly not his will to power. In the recent decade –after the revolution of diferencia and the uprisings of poets fighting for their individual voice– the Spanish literary system has given way to the heterodox as it simultaneously and paradoxically amalgamates into the present orthodox.

Gallego Ripoll did not immediate appreciate the Ateneo de Sevilla and union of the poets of diferencia, tacitly stating that “Yo no era un poeta de la diferencia, yo era un poeta diferente”

(Gallego Ripoll, Personal interview.). It is however, from this difference and the toils of the poetas invisibles, that the story of this Manchegan poet perhaps now lays written somewhere in between:

No, no pertenece Federico Gallego Ripoll a ese grupo de “Los poetas invisibles”, epígrafe

del que se ha valido para dar título al libro con el que, el pasado año 2006, consiguiera el

155

Premio “Emilio Alarcos”, que publica la colección Visor de Poesía. Contrariamente al

título y al poema que abre dicho libro, Gallego Ripoll, desde que en 1981 apareciera

Poemas del Condottiero, pasando por catorce títulos más, que han hecho de él uno de los

mejores poetas de su generación, es un poeta claramente visible, palpable en la armoniosa

imagen de sus versos, pues no en vano su reconocimiento a nivel nacional. (del Hierro).

5. The difference of Juan Carlos Mestre or Heterodoxy in Orthodoxy

“El poema no es intemporal. Por supuesto encierra una pretensión de infinitud, intenta pasar a través del tiempo: a través de él, no por encima de él.”

-Paul Celan

5.1. Beginnings and marginality

Antonio Gamoneda once keenly articulated, while giving a preamble to a reading of

Poetas por el casco antiguo, that poetry had no need to dialogue with our conception of reality, as poetry constituted itself a distinct, palpable, reality; “la poesía no tiene que hablar de la realidad porque ella misma es una realidad.” (qtd. in Salvador). This aphorism by Gamoneda –a distinguished Leones poet by his own right, who also wrote from a certain poetic marginality and held a tendency for literary independence129– would ring true for another poet of a later generation who hailed from the very same region in Spain. Juan Carlos Mestre, born in

129 Gamoneda, like Mestre, at one point overcame hegemony in his own right; “Ni el silencio, ni la indiferencia, ni la escritura a contracorriente durante muchos años consiguieron acallar la voz de uno de los poetas más hondos y auténticos que ha dado nuestro idioma. Antonio Gamoneda ha sabido mantenerse fiel a la palabra poética sin escuchar las sirenas de las tendencias de moda ni plegarse a ningún discurso ni grupo dominante. Su independencia y su obra son un ejemplo de integridad, de honestidad con la palabra. Ahora, el tiempo hace justicia, llegan los premios: el Cervantes, el Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana, la Medalla de Oro del CBA…algo está cambiando, no todo está perdido.” (Iglesias El triunfo). 156

Villafranca del Bierzo in 1957, is considered today as a poet, visual artist, performance artist, letrista, and musician of some international notoriety 130 . By birth right alone, he is compartmentalized as a “poeta leonés” granting Mestre kinship with other poets from that region including the aforementioned Gamoneda, alongside Ildefonso Rodríguez, Aldo Z. Sanz, Eloísa

Otero and Miguel Suárez –who, coincidentally, all form part of the poetic field of late 20th century–. A chronological biography would be traitorous to the flowing mural-like tendencies of a poet such as Mestre, instead a glance into how difference becomes part and parcel of his poetic endeavors and permeates his many works. To be sure, the oeuvre of Mestre is evidence of the engagement of the margins in an organic counterhegemonic attitude of poetic liberation that was latent at the end of the 20th century.

Ángel Prieto de Paula writes about the leonés poet as forming part, if not overtly, of the revolutionary movement against the realist-referential poetry of the 1990s, that is “que la poesía de finales de los noventa mostraba un afán de liberación de los complejos referenciales que la afectaron durante años.” (“Otras Corrientes”). Mestre’s poetry beckons a return to an animistic conception of the poetic and human condition, in contrast to the more calculated and traditional hegemonic poetry of the previous decade(s). As a defender of the formative and generative nature of language, of signs in the most primordial sense, Mestre becomes a guarantor of the continuity and extrapolation of the semiotic system of poetry, facilitator of the poetic patrimony that flows from his forerunners and into the future progeny. That is to say that the poetry of Juan

Carlos Mestre plays in harmony and dissonance with parole and langue, sign and signifier,

130 El país writes of Mestre: “De su diálogo con la obra de otros artistas y poetas el autor, que en el ámbito de las artes plásticas ha expuesto su obra gráfica y pictórica en galerías de España, EEUU, Europa y Latinoamérica (…) Mestre ha editado numerosos libros de artista, como el Cuaderno de Roma (2005), versión gráfica de La tumba de Keats, y ha acompañado con sus grabados poemas de Antonio Gamoneda, Diego Valverde, Miguel Ángel Muñoz Sanjuán, Gonzalo Rojas o Jorge Riechmann. Su colaboración con otros creadores y músicos como Amancio Prada, Luis Delgado o José Zárate, ha sido recogida en varias grabaciones discográficas.” (Logra el Premio Nacional) . 157 twisting the text into a new, dynamic, narrative that would eventually also encompass the social sphere131.

Mestre has refined this poetic voice after over three decades of works, beginning with

Siete poemas escritos junto a la lluvia followed by La visita de Safo published in 1982 and 1983 respectively. Upon reaching an initial surge of recognition and critical attention through the publication of his third book of poetry in 1982, Antífona de otoño en el valle del Bierzo, he became the recipient of the coveted Premio Adonais. His multi-year residence in Chile in the mid-1980s –an experience that Mestre would continue to carry with him poetically– inspired him to write Las páginas de fuego (1987). Once again returning to Spain in the early 1990s, Mestre published his lauded La poesía ha caído en desgracia (1992) –awarding him the Premio Jaime

Gil de Biedma– and was followed by La tumba de Keats (Premio Jaén de Poesía 1999). Mestre’s recent poetic work, La casa roja (2009), was selected for the national Premio Nacional de Poesía and was followed by his latest endeavor, La bicicleta del panadero (2012). His literary production is crowned with the anthologies Las estrellas para quien las trabaja (2007) and

Elogio de la palabra (2009). A short review of his published works is vital in order to track literary and social movement of Mestre throughout the era and poetic fields of experience and difference, and thereby catalogue his habitus.

Throughout the course of Mestre’s poetic career, his works have gone on to disseminate and conquer a breadth of local, national and international communities and imaginations.

Preliminary rumination into why the leonés poet has drawn sociocultural attention beginning in

131 In regards to the link between the socially critical and the linguistic in the later works of Mestre, Fratelle writes: “Lo spettro linguistico-compositivo entro cui orientare la ricerca espressiva si è inoltre sensibilmente dilatato, includendo al proprio interno tonalita anche drammatiche, sequenze narrative, scorci biografici, cronaca, riflessioni metaletterarie. Il vuoto, la pagina bianca, sono tornati a riempirsi di segni visibili, udibili, tangibili, offrendo percorsi di lettura dinamici e vivacemente relazionali. Dallo sfondo una figura si stacca per versatilità, originalità del dettato, forza d’impatto sul pubblico che lo segue sempre più numeroso.” (45) 158 the 1990s, stems from the innovative manner in which Mestre treats language and the sign- signifier relation; that is, as both arbitrary and differential. In this fashion, his poetry becomes critical or even emancipatory within the larger discourse of the Spanish field of poetry at the end of the 20th century (i.e. aesthetic liberation in the manner which the Frankfurt Marxists debated).

Mestre’s poetic discursivity is further unique in that its postmodern and individual tendencies strongly bond it with the counterhegemonic movements of difference that were growing in popularity during the 1980s and especially the 1990s: “Una de las corrientes más interesantes de este tiempo es la que enlaza las vivencias personales de carácter subjetivo con las de índole coral; no porque se trate de una poesía de plaza pública o declamatoria desde el punto de vista formal. (Prieto de Paula Otras corrientes). Moreover, Juan José Lanz describes the differentiating and polymathic characteristics of Mestre’s poetry as not only stylistically heterogeneous but, additionally, socio-critical in nature: “lo salmódico, lo hímnico, lo visionario y lo surreal, en una dicción que tiene mucho de alucinada pero también de introspección sensorial e intelectual y de una decidida voluntad de denuncia crítica” (39)132.

Mestre’s style takes cues from a certain poetic forerunner that critics find themselves obligated to cite, that of the aforementioned Antonio Gamoneda133. The verses of Gamoneda touched on Mestre’s early works, most notably in his poetry in the early to mid-1980s, including

132The critical atmosphere surrounding the works of Mestre,(which are to a great degree anti-capitalistic, anti- systemic and postmodern in some fashion) go against the dominant ideology of the burgeoise poetry of experience, and form part, instead, of a unique heteogeneity: “Si en otro tiempo las ideas de una clase dominante (o hegemónica) conﬁguraron la ideología de la sociedad burguesa, actualmente los países capitalistas desarrollados son un campo de heterogeneidad discursiva y estilística carente de norma. Unos amos sin rostro siguen produciendo las estrategias económicas que constriñen nuestras vidas, pero ya no necesitan (o son incapaces de) imponer su lenguaje; y la posliteratura del mundo tardocapitalista no reﬂeja únicamente la ausencia de un gran proyecto colectivo, sino también la cabal inexistencia de la vieja lengua nacional” (Pérez López 217) 133 Mestre himself identifies Antonio Gamoneda as a poetic influence, “De adolescente leí un verso de Antonio Gamoneda, mi admirado maestro, que no me ha abandonado nunca” (Mestre qtd. in Sabogal); perhaps because Gamoneda had more in common with a “poetry of difference” (in short, poetic experimentation and individuality) tan from the aesthetic statu quo of his era,“Ocupa Gamoneda un lugar especial: podemos hallarle ideológicamente un parecido con la llamada generación del medio siglo, pero formalmente está más cerca de las innovaciones de la poesía joven.” (Martínez 21). 159

Siete poemas escritos junto a la lluvia (1981), La visita de Safo (1983) and Antífona del otoño en el valle del Bierzo (1986); while notable, the influence from other contemporary authors such as

Julio Llamazares –La lentitud de los bueyes (1979) and Memoria de la nieve (1982)– should not be readily discounted. Undoubtedly, the poetics and versification of Mestre, in his poetry of the

1980s evolved until they broach with prose and the symbolic imagism groups into rhythmic sequences bordering on psalmist poetry, all in service of an earthly ambiance of fantastic expressive intensity and emotional strength (Prieto de Paula “Otras corrientes”). This poetic style would further culminate into the abstractly structural essence of his later works, as demonstrated in La poesía ha caído en desgracia (1992) and La tumba de Keats (1999), through which a vocation to human solidarity and passionate radicalism contribute to the richness of the poetic melody. In the case of ancillary literary influences, critics such as Morales Barba have noted hints of the novísimo aesthetic in the works of Mestre, as a “Poeta vinculado al asociativismo verbal que implantó en la España de los 70, no es tanto un heredero del movimiento novísimo

(que lo es), como de las fuentes imagistas que propiciaron igualmente a Gimferrer.” (183).

Ancillary past and present poets that resonate or have in some way inspired Mestre’s ouvre include: Antonio Colinas, Antonio Pereira, José Ángel Valente, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Federico

García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre, Octavio Paz, Juan de la Cruz, Paul Celan, Ezra

Pound, Arthur Rimbaud (Fratelle 46).

In the 1980s, alongside Gimferrer and other poets writing at that time from non-centrist position134, Mestre would be pigeonholed into a group known as the irracionalistas despite having ephemeral affinity and no direct ties with such a specific poetic movement. In effect, the

134 García de la Concha identifies influences from other poets from the León región, including marking him as a disciple of “el poeta Gilberto Núñez Ursinos” (8) as well as drawing initial influences and citing from “A. Pereira, J. Llamazares, J.A. Llamas, J. Carlón, poetas todos ellos leoneses y empeñados, con otros poetas y novelistas, en elevar la historia, el paisaje, y la vida de su tierra a categoría estética universal.” (8). 160 plausible link between them is that the trend of the irracionalistas –a literary parallel to the tropes and leit motifs present in Mestre’s early works (Antífona del otoño)– is historically known to espouse characteristics or traits that demonstrate a direct evolution from the poetics of the novísimos; also known as undertaking the “herencia novísima” (Morales Barba 183). The legacy of the novísimos would in turn signal the continuing legacy of an “avant-garde” –differential poetry of the margins– in spite of their invisible status during the height of the hegemonic poetics of the 1980s and early 1990s. Mestre and subaltern poetic groups such as the irracionalists would constitute the invisible avant-garde, working from the shadows of the hegemonic realist groups, and therefore “desconectados de la estética dominante” (Prieto de Paula “Otras

Corrientes” ). However, the precise individual divergence of Juan Carlos Mestre –that which presents his decentralizing, individual poetic voice and spirit of deconstruction and fragmentation– is evidenced through what Tomás Sánchez Santiago calls “la responsabilidad de la imaginación” (the responsibility of the imagination), the singular anchor to the fierce and turbulent creativity of this leonés poet. The sociocritical responsibility and the play of poetic imagination are the impetus behind Mestre’s difference, what drives his heterodoxic position and what will late propel him into the fragmented orthodoxy of difference.

If one entertains the Freudian binary of conscious-subconscious as analogous logic to the apollonian-dionysian, then what Sánchez Santiago assumes by “responsabilidad poética” is perhaps contrasted to the inherent irresponsibility of the imagination, that is, the chaotic essence which seeps from the infinite liberty of the unconscious. The irresponsibility is juxtaposed with the “responsabilidad poética”, or the necessity of intelligible linguistic signs which must mesh with the creative and literary output of the poet-creator. Mestre’s poetry may be found in state

161 betwixt and between both worlds135, dancing wildly with poetic imagination –as mentioned in

Sainz’s, “Discurso de la desobediencia”)– while battling to remain within the confines of linguistic comprehension. This may evoke the memory of the symbolists, who prized, in a post- romantic era, the powerful emotion of imagination in the poetry of Verlaine and Rimbaud; or perhaps a more poignant example, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam’s play Axël (1890) in which the two enamored protagonists commit suicide in order to remain in the more compelling realm of the imagination which transcended reality. As with the symbolists, Mestre’s poetry indicates that language does not inherently possess the proper capability to express abstract ideas and concepts such as imagination, fate, and so forth –in the spirit of Rimbaud, “Que comprendre à ma parole?

/ Il fait qu'elle fuit et vole!” (qtd. in Bishop 51)–, and therefore the exile of the transcendental signifier becomes all but unavoidable (the absolution of the transcendental signifier).

How Mestre shapes the individual thematic and aesthetics to balance the responsibility-

irresponsibility of the poetic language within his texts, brings about the following

discerning qualities: Expulsión de la lógica, anulación del tiempo, abolición de las

contradicciones (…) hablamos de romanticismo visionario, negación de un discurso

pacífico, intromisión de las palabras en el pensamiento –y no al revés-, descomposición

de la estructura prevista para el poema –en su caso por un hipertrofismo creciente (…),

ebria constelación de imágenes…, renuncia, en fin, a una visión lineal de la temporalidad

y la espacialidad.” (Sánchez Santiago).

The only limitation for the leonés poet seems to be the limits of language itself. Ultimately a paradox, language is the supreme tool of the poet, to be embraced yet reforged, according to

135 Sánchez Santiago notes a fluctuation between “responsabilidad y libertad” (“La responsabilidad”). 162

Elogio de la palabra136. The fury of the unconscious crosses the lucidity of the dream state and sweeps through langue and into parole, says the poet in La tumba de Keats: “No han sido escritas estas palabras –dice el poeta– para el conocimiento de la razón”, and moreover, “Hablas el dialecto de quien ha padecido un sueño” (Mestre La tumba 40). The poetic drive of the symbolist/surrealists tradition of anti-mimesis leads to, in Mestre, the rebellion of “la poesía bajo los lenguajes bárbaros. De esa estela ardiente y llena de fosforescencia expresiva ingobernable viene serpeando el canto y el recado de Juan Carlos Mestre.” (Sánchez Santiago). The voice of

Mestre leads to a personalized understanding of his meta-linguistic game, one of poetic exuberance, eccentricity and paradox:

“Aquí cada palabra, cada gota de tristeza arrancada a la nada, es una medalla de diamante

perfecto, la consolación, el vértigo que entregas de tus pasos a otro al acercarte al vacío.

Este es el poema, el resplandor erigido en la libertad de la jaula, la cicatriz en la médula

de este tiempo que pasa sin duración en nosotros.” (Mestre La poesía 31)

Mestre is thus a poet that speaks by that which cannot be communicated, breaking the oppressive chains of realist language that confined the hegemony. Upholder of a poetry which displays the invisible signifiers, or that “conciencia de algo de lo que no se puede tener conciencia de ninguna otra manera” (Bernal 43), Juan Carlos Mestreeschews the prosaic representation of reality (like the symbolists), demonstrating only the realities of his text, his language, and by extension, its singular transaction with the reader: “Así, presentando el mundo, no representándolo, y mostrando la vida, no literaturizándola, logra Mestre huir de poetizar lo

136 In various telling verses of Elogio de la palabra, Mestre subtlely elicits the power of the logos-word in his poetry: “Esta palabra no ha sido pronunciada contra los dioses, esta palabra y la sombra de esta palabra han sido pronunciadas ante el vacío, para una multitud que no existe. (Mestre La poesía 7). 163 real: su empresa, vitalísima, encinta, nos entrega la poesía de lo real, su belleza verdadera y cruel” (Sánchez Santiago). There is, secondly, a dualistic nature of responsibility to the poetic language and a subsequent relinquishment, playfulness and innovation to the very same language that is being manipulated, that is, to the sausserian parole. In the poetry of Mestre, sign relation regains a pivotal and revitalized role in poetic discourse, as well as a reevaluating of all poetic elements, in-text, meta-textual, physical, aural, visual, and so forth. To mention again the opening poem of La poesía ha caído en desgracia, “Elogio de la palabra” harbors a respectful playfulness, deautomatization, innovation and reimagining of tradition in poetic language and as such demonstrates both a responsibility and a vital precept of poetic differentiation. Mestre’s poetic structure becomes plainly evident as exemplified in the following verses of Elogio,

Cuando la muerte acabe, la raíz de esta palabra y la hoja de esta palabra arderán en un

bosque que otro fuego consume. Lo que fue amado como cuerpo, lo escrito en la

docilidad del árbol único, será consolación en un paisaje lejano. (Mestre La poesía 7).

This poetic sample, and by extension, his performances, eliminate or rupture the referential linguistic-expressive aesthetic that dominated the horizon of expectations of the center137, and show a deliberate defiance to the hegemonic poetry of 1980s.

Evidence of this position can be found in his early works such La visita de Safo (1983) and Antífona del Otoño en el Valle del Bierzo (1986), which, alongside other books by poets I n

137 Precisely before the revolution of peotic differences in the first half the 1990s, Mestre’s iconoclastic and rupturistic style, including his public performances, was not easily digested nor enjoyed by the Spanish public: “Nel caso di Mestre, il recupero della forma recitata e la scelta di campo a favore di una poesia dilatata e inclusiva di tutto (prosa, monologhi e recitativi drammatici, musica, canto, elegie, inni, sermoni, invettive, memorie, manifesti), in anni – il decennio degli Ottanta – in cui l’estrema selettività di materiali e parole in poesia era ancora considerata un valore non facilmente negoziabile, assumono di per sé un rilievo particolare.” (Fratelle 47) 164 this investigation, were published during the beginning of what may be considered a period of

“difference”. Antífona conjures a melancholic journey to the origin of the poet, evoking countryside and memory and expressing an expansive imaginarium that functions as its structural backbone, expanding each poem horizontally. Mestre’s textual production in the 1980s, including Antífona, though forged of individual composition and purposefully disjointed from any specific poetic tendency or group of that time, was not to be judged by its own individuality and merit, but rather was lumped in an “othering” tendency and into a post- novísimo/culturalismo/irracionalist category. The positive upshot to this forced relegation and compartmentalize to the novísimos movement was that Mestre would socioculturally inherit the legacy of “avant-garde”, that is, the poets who worked in binary opposition to the forces of the canon or hegemony.

From this point onwards, throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Mestre would be historiographically profiled as a literary figure of the cultural margins, the subaltern. The centrist powers decreed his poetry unworthy of major literary prizes –despite the modicum of critical merit they received– and, as a result, his works were absent from anthologies and not included in the canon, “como el de otro raro que no halla más sitio en el canon que el que le asigna su marginalidad, la que lo mantiene ausente de todas las antologías pese a los premios de que se ha hecho merecedor.” (Molina Damiani)138. This “strange other” poet would -through what may be attributed to the force of his own literary ingenuity and experimentation- receive a number of prizes throughout the hegemony of the poetry of experience, but would otherwise be relegated to an invisible status (in bourdeisuian terms, removed from the doxa). However, as the early 1990s

138This was an era marked by the oligarchic hegemony of the so-called “poetry of experience”: “La poesía española del siglo XXI viene marcada por la deﬁnitiva apertura del canon estrechísimo que había marcado las últimas décadas, en particular ante la hegemonía de una propuesta experiencial de carácter prosaico, narrativo y abierto a la inﬂuencia de los medios de comunicación masivos que determinó una parte relevante de la poesía escrita en los años 80 y 90.” (Pérez López 207). 165 ushered in a mark into the nascent period of both the movement of diferencia and therefore difference, Mestre’s symbolic emergence as a notable poet began., Mestre would find himself on the vanguard, the frontlines of the poetic revolution, with his publication of La poesía ha caído en desgracia which, was able to garner a coveted literary prize even with a difficult prize jury

(including Rafael Alberti y Luis Rosales).

Unconcerned with adapting to or joining the hegemonic system which had excluded poets in the margins, Mestre instead thrived within an esoteric individualism removed from the capitalist machinations and homogenized aesthetics prevalent throughout the 1980s and 1990s;

“la marginalidad de Juan Carlos Mestre deriva de su individualismo comprometido, de su espiritualidad materialista, ajena a los dos constructos estéticos que han estandarizado la estética de nuestros días” (Molina Damiani). As a literary iconoclast, whose art is not necessarily a banal playground for the bourgeoisie, the poetry of the leonés poet grew to become a paradise of imagination: “Su poesía es búsqueda y persistencia, los límites se disipan, las palabras pueblan la inexistencia, son resonancias de las voces que desde el pasado nos recuerdan el imperativo categórico de la imaginación como realidad cotidiana frente a la banalidad y el sufrimiento.”

(Gómez Ruiz 9).

It is both Mestre’s idiosyncratic poetic aesthetic and his anti-systemic ideological stance towards the fields of power that delineate a marginal position139, distancing his poetics from the centers of capitalistic power (both socially and literarily). It is by the 1990s that his poetry metamorphoses into a dualistic system that is poético and político, a unique bond wherein the poetry structure will take on a critical perspective, a bastion to those, much like himself, who

139 The marginality and antisystem of Mestre is won forcefully, through the dialectic differentiation of his aesthetic and ideological position evidenced through the evolution of text: “Esta marginalidad ganada tiene su causa, en la organización de su apuesta poética: una obra, un antisistema que ha organizado y alimentado en cada libro progresivamente, y que como dice Molina Damiani, defiende a la poesía como «la conciencia de algo de lo que no se puede tener conciencia de ninguna otra manera».” (Ramos Van Dick). 166 have been, or continue to be, the other: “hay una fe que persiste en dialogar con voces de otros tiempos, como la de los surrealistas, de poetas como Ledo Ivo, artistas plásticos; y en otros casos darle voz a los que no la tienen: los olvidados, los marginados, los disidentes.” (Ramos Van

Dick). As the poetry of difference staged a rebellion versus the authoritative poetic systems of order and reason, so too did Mestre by his own accord. However, this was not only limited to poetic discourse, but included the life of the poet as well140; both the lyrical figure and poetic logos became a voice from the outside of the center, “un desfile a través de una serie de apuestas: lo mágico, la imaginación, el sueño, la fantasía, la visión: una palabra normalmente marginada y vuelta ajena al lector, queda expuesta.” (Ramos Van Dick). Early insights into the politización de lo poético can be gleaned as embroidering even in these verses of Antífona del Otoño (titled

Antepasados):

“Mis antepasados inventaron la Vía Láctea, / dieron a esa intemperie el nombre de la

necesidad, / al hambre le llamaron muralla del hambre, / a la pobreza le pusieron el

nombre de todo lo que no es extraño a la pobreza. / (…) Entonces pusieron nombre al

hambre para que el amo del hambre / se llamara dueño de la casa del hambre / y vagaron

por los caminos / como los erizos y los lagartos vagan por los senderos de las aldeas”.

(Mestre Antífona 58).

140 It was not only the text that showed a recalcitrance for the centrist field of poetry, but also how the leonés poet presented himself publically throughout these decades; “Junto a Mestre es imposible abdicar de toda herejía, su vida y su obra son formas de resistencia civil frente a los discursos autoritarios del orden y la razón, frente a los amos que han querido relegar al margen la belleza como derecho fundamental de los débiles.” (Gómez 10) 167

While Mestre was not yet as radical in a sense of structural defamiliarization and social awareness in the verses of Antífona, there is a budding concern for coaxing the reader into critical inquiry in regards to poetic language and sociocultural concerns.

The leonés poet plays with a critical-poetic vision that is conscious of the poetry of experience and the logics of the new democratic-capitalist state. A difference from the statu quo, and a postmodernism especially evident in later works including La casa roja, behests the unique vision of Mestre’s poetry. Once again, marginal (difference) versus hegemony (experience)141 is evidenced by the distancing and derivation from the aesthetic standard of the 1980s and 1990s and, as stated previously, became a factor for the exclusion from numerous anthologies and related texts. One such example includes José Luis García Martín’s canon-forming work La generación de los ochenta (1988) which did not include Mestre, –a trend that would continue during the 1990s by other critics’ anthologies. While those who espoused a thematic difference – the so-called inheritors of the “avant-garde” that began publishing in the 1980s– though not included in generative works such as La generación de los ochenta, were nonetheless representative of a counter-hegemonic position, including: Blanca Andreu, Jorge Riechmann,

Juan Carlos Mestre, Fernando Beltrán o José María Parreño.” (Juan José Lanz 274).

While the categorization of a poet –such as those referenced– is antithetical to a system of differences or postmodernism, an analysis of the varying phases of Mestre’s poetic oeuvre is vital to the understanding of his evolving and decisive role in the poetic field of 20th century

Spain. As a rudimentary diachronic paradigm, Mestre’s works can be analyzed as evolving from a introductory period with a penchant for the familiar, yet fantastic, which includes Siete poemas,

141 The individualism and margin difference of Mestre drive his poetry from the middle class burgeoise poetry that was being consumed during the 1980s and 1990s; “la marginalidad de Juan Carlos Mestre deriva de su individualismo comprometido, de su espiritualidad materialista, ajena [al] naturalismo burocrático que consumen las clases medias ilustradas de nuestra sociedad tardocapitalista.” (Molina Damiani ). 168

La visita, and Antífona. This would be followed by the acclaimed La poesía ha caído en desgracia and La tumba de Keats (alongside a few other books of poetry in the early to mid-

1990s) and finally culminating with La casa roja and La bicicleta del panadero, which couples the fantastic with an ideology of cultural and social enlightenment. Perhaps through this, a glimpse of the poetic discourse of Juan Carlos Mestre emerges: in a horacian manner, imagination becomes both a necessity in the creation of unconventional poetic language and a vessel in the search for an existential truth: As Mestre’s words show, he understands the role of poetry as more than just art, instead as:

la voz de los poetas que devuelven a las palabras el verdadero sentido para el que están

hechas, para construir la casa de la verdad y seguir recordando qué significan las palabras

justicia, piedad o misericordia. La literatura, el arte, es hoy más útil que nunca como faro

que guía en el camino a los errantes. (Mestre qtd. in Ángel López)

5.2. The formative years: The familiar and the fantastic

As previously mentioned, 1982 saw publication of Mestre’s first book, Siete poemas, which would be followed by La visita de Safo (1983) and Antífona (1986) with the latter winning the Premio Adonaís in 1985. These three books form the early period in the poetic trajectory of

Mestre, as they collectively bear witness to the author’s nostalgic immediacy, familiar surroundings and lyrical biography (e.g. Valle del Bierzo echoes the name of Mestre’s place of birth) –a beginning stage of learning whose characteristics are similarly shared by other poets of difference such as Blance Andreu and Amalia Iglesias–. While not yet showing the more

169 extreme eccentricities of affluent imagination and the cultural awareness of his later works, some of these elements begin to shine through in Antífona del Otoño;,Mestre’s most critically acclaimed early work. As such, the poems of Antífona are budding with a fantastic symbolism that will become a hallmark and driving force of Mestre’s poetic differentiation, acting as confesional poetry mixed with hints of the fantastic. A leit motif that would carry on throughout his work, that of a visionary of imagination, would become his personalized poetic universe, “de gran intensidad y densidad, poblado por gorriones y migas de memoria, por arcángeles y erizos.”

(Pérez López 210).

La visita de Safo opens Mestre’s poetic journey and displays a penchant for unusual linguistic creation, strange or fantastic premises, and ample verbal proliferation. The young poet treads surefootedly on more personal terrain, not yet attaining the critical eye that is pivotal to his later works. This pioneer work is an icon and model which will grow to become Mestre’s discerning style, as evidenced mainly by the burgeoning linguistic elements and style. An avant- garde style –subtly in the manner of the novísimos– can be seen int the opening verses, “En mi soledad reunido, más único que el cielo en el asombro oh luz continuada donde amo y soy sabido

Amarilis tristeza” (Mestre La visita 14). This leads to surreal images of nature such as “la luna se entregaba entre pinares” (Mestre La visita 15), followed by the mystical reference to classic grecoroman philosophy (through poems titled after Parménides, Heráclito, and Anaxemenes), and a germination of pantheistic spirituality (such as the invocation of the Aztec god

Xochiquetzal who, according to the authorial voice is the god of the transsexual). Due to its different voice, unique lyricism and cultural/historical sensibilities, this particular book was a finalist in the Bienal de Poesía de León and demonstrated Mestre’s sense of poetic discourse: “la

170 muy temprana preocupación lírica por el paisaje y la historia de su tierra berciana (…) se ampliaba con resonancias culturalistas.” (García de la Concha 8).

La vista de safo holds eclectic allusions and intertextualities (a staple in Mestre’s poetry going forward) as the leonés poet evokes Pasolini (Tres poemas para Pier Paolo Pasolini), makes mention of the French theorist Barthes, heads to the isle of Lesbos, Cleis and the Castillo de Cornatel, makes light of the Greek poet Sappho, weaves in the music of Gustav Mahler and the symbolic love of Dalila. Through these poetic tropes, Mestre carves out an early poetics based on his own creation, a platonic medium, or vessel, of the poetic stream that is based on an enlightened cultural tradition and inheritance:

El texto literario forma un cuerpo autónomo del sujeto que lo escribe. Porque no soy yo

el que gobierna el texto, sino el texto quien me gobierna a mí. Soy un medium en el

proceso de la escritura. Recojo una tradición cultural. Soy una simple excusa que

reescribe la tradición. Hay un principio de casualidad. (Mestre Creación).

Thus a poem in La visita such as “Villafranca” becomes an elegy to time and space praising the protagonist and the the proustian memory, –the paradigmatic symbol of Mestre’s poetic imagination and literary production-. The discursive patterns and leit motifs which flow through

La visita de Safo and Antífona del Otoño, by their very essence deautomatize the mimetic realism espoused by the hegemonic poets in the 1980s; “se opone no solo al mimetismo retiniano de los tardorrealistas sino también a los automatismos aposta de quienes a mediados de los ochenta intentaban reabrir la dicción del surrealismo a partir de patrones neoclásicos” (Molina Damiani).

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Antífona del Otoño continues the poetic process found throughout La visita de Safo and likewise instills a sense of the familiar and personal lyrical history, superimposed with creatures and landscapes brushed with a surreal symbolism. In this case, the reader is transported to a fantastic pseudo-biographical recounting of the past of the rural land of Bierzo142, wrought in a

“tono emocional, melancólico, y añorante en sus rememoraciones y reivindicaciones del ámbito rural, además de ráfagas de talento tropológico en pugna con la acumulación verbal.” (Morales

Barba 183). Achieving greater semantic and linguistic richness, and nuanced signification on various levels of understanding, Mestre recreates verses linked with the mythological traditions of the “poética del norte” which is an arcane, mystic and pantheistic art, and rediscovers the aeons of time passed –a universal theme of his poetics–. There is likewise an invocation and reinvention of a personal memory and voices from the author’s youth, which the lyric poet transfigures into a mythical, fantastic, space, a deliberate attempt to make light of time that has gone. 143.

From amidst the confluence of memory and cultural representation –“Yo te he amado pequeño pueblo entre dos ríos / donde supo mi corazón el don de la palabra y las alondras.”

(Mestre Creación)–, there appears the sublimation of an irrantional fantasy (here a derivation of magical realism) in verses such as “tiendas de ultramarinos y ángeles que cruzan el cielo en bicicleta” (Mestre Creación); linguistic metaphors that border on the surreal, “nostalgia es un pájaro que enciende su rumor en la noche” (Mestre Creación) and play of synesthesia as in

“Ídolo de Noceda”: “verdes racimos amargos y anudados de la aurora.” (Mestre Creación).

142 Morales Barba elucidates a list of biographical places, referential allusions, and lyrical emotions referenced and elaborated throughout Antífona del Otoño; “El otoño, la tristeza, los concretos campos de Arganza, Noceda y Balouta, los valles de Seo y Valcarce, o Peñalba de Santiago y el incomparable Valle del Silencio, los castañares de septiembres y las aldeas perdidas, cobraban un pulso nuevo con intensidad no impostada por la excesividad.” (184). 143 In regards to the early works of Mestre, or how they are in some way cloaked in nostalgia, “(…) su obra es una aproximación al espacio perdido de la lejana tierra y el recuerdo de sus gentes, de su pueblo, o por su fe en la poesía como último reducto de la libertad y de la utopía (Nieves Alonso page number). 172

Mestre’s focus on the quotidian and rural, glazed with the fantastic and arcane, clashed with the rhetoric of the poets of experience, further marginalizing the leonés poet. As the hegemonic or

“central” current during the early to mid-1980s had been shifting towards an urban and realist poetic aesthetic, thus the poems of Antífona del Otoño and similar works would find Mestre excluded from symbolic capital and the dominant hierarchy; “le situaron frente a los antólogos del realismo y de la poesía urbana, que le excluyeron de las antologías tanto por las modas y el auge urbanita-realista, como por sus propios merodeos despulsados o logolálicos en ocasiones.”

(Morales Barba 185). Moreover, the poets of the hegemony would begin their efforts of symbolic violence, even so far as rejecting the poets who had won the Premio Adonáis (such as Mestre in

1982) and stripping them of symbolic capital; “defenestraban mucho de lo que venía de

Adonáis” (Morales Barba 185).

5.3. Chile and Revolution

In the late 1980s, with a poetics and personal ideology that firmly planted Mestre in the sociocultural margins of the field of Spanish poetry, he travelled to Chile for a number of years for cultural work that inevitably lead to new cultural insights and knowledge. His meeting with the Chilean painter Alexandra Domínguez formed the impetus for this adventure, and upon settling in Chile he was able to share with the collective spirit of those fighting for liberty and justice by those resisting the regime of Pinochet. Mestre adopted the verse form as his tool for antisystemic criticism and the poet as dissident from his time there:

Uno forma parte allí del colectivo que mantiene encendida la pequeña luz dentro de la

oscuridad absoluta del medio. Cualquier pequeña actividad, que uno realiza se convierte

173

en un paso adelante, en una sobrevivencia, en una suerte de resistencia intelectual frente a

un medio hostil (…) El discurso del poder no puede correr paralelo al discurso

intelectual. El poeta siempre tiene que ser un disidente (Mestre qtd. in Moreno “Juan

Carlos Mestre”).

With this fresh and polarizing point of view, in Chile he published Las páginas del fuego and, upon returning to Spain, La poesía ha caído en desgracia (1992), the book of poems which would earn him to the Premio Jaime Gil de Biedma in 1992. The latter work, La poesía ha caído en desgracia, diverges from poetry in the first period to various degrees, such as in the deviation from Greco-roman couplet form (elegy) and other rigid metrical stances, switching instead to free verse, in search of a new poetic musicality and melancholy. A riskier endeavor to be sure,

La poesía ha caído reaches a higher level of abstraction and uses a stream of consciousness automatic writing (in the style of a prose-poem), all cemented by fantasy, dreams and even prophetic visions that gained importance in previous works. La poesía ha caído is rife with imagination, but also cradles the ability to express his poetic rationale unto the reader: “un acabado racional redondea sus poemas, resultados de una escritura matérica, informal y visionaria pero siempre acogida a un proceso de imaginación formal cuya razón constructiva la dicta un radar cuya vocación no es otra que comunicar con el destinatario del texto.” (Molina

Damiani). The poetic discourse of this period becomes superrealist, heterogeneous in vision, rhetorically dense and oneiric in state as in the poem Nocturno en Silos, “el miércoles de ceniza los caballos sin ojos pastarán entre las hojas de acanto el marfil de la muerte.” (Mestre La poesía

50).

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La poesía ha caído, through poetic verse alone, questions the era of linguistic silence, the era del silencio144. Alongside the revolution of difference, the so-called era of silence laid claim to a period of poetic proliferation that was considered by certain critics to be linguistically stagnant, and relegated avant-garde poets to a state of voiceless cultural subalternity. “Elogio de la palabra” hosts one of the more iconic verses of Mestre from the 1990s, and shows his effort to break down the poetic silence and the centralizing tendencies of the time:

Esta palabra no ha sido pronunciada contra los dioses,/ esta palabra y la sombra de esta palabra han sido pronunciadas ante el vacío, para una multitud que no existe. / Cuando la muerte acabe, la raíz de esta palabra y la hoja de esta palabra arderán en un bosque que otro fuego consume. /

Lo que fue amado como cuerpo, lo escrito en la docilidad del árbol único, será consolación en un paisaje lejano. Como la inmóvil mirada del pájaro ante la ballesta, así la palabra y la sombra de esa palabra aguardan su permanencia más allá de la revelación de la muerte. / Sólo el aire,

únicamente lo que del aire al aire mismo trasmitimos como testamento de lo nombrado, permanecerá de nosotros. / La luz, la materia de esta palabra y el ruido de la sombra de esta palabra. (Mestre La poesía 7-8).

Mestre promotes the universal liberty of the poetic logos, a transcendental signifier, the metaphysical extrapolation of the lyrical-poet; “la palabra pretende rescatar todas esas áreas de poesía.” (García de la Concha)145.

144 Sultana Wahnón wrote in regards to a time of metaphorical poetic silence from the margins: “Interrogación sobre la condición de la palabra en ese tiempo que se ha deﬁnido como aquel en el que ya no es posible hablar (…) el de la desgracia y la menesterosidad de la poesía (de la palabra en general) en la era del silencio” (23). 145 La poesía ha caído en desgracia can be described as marking the state of a petrified poetics that is found to be in a state of crisis and disrepair. The titled beckons to a state of poetry that can be elevated or healed once again, that is if one is to listen to the message hidden behind the text. As Nieves Alonso points out in concurrence, “con toda precisión el tiempo y el espacio en el que la palabra poética debe ser pronunciada, todo está en ruinas, toda necesidad ha desaparecido, todo ha sido ya arrastrado por el viento. En el tiempo y en el espacio de la precariedad, 175

Though not quite as ambitious or evocative as La poesía ha caído en desgracia (1992),

Mestre’s other works from this time period share similar qualities; these include Las páginas del fuego (1987), El arca de los dones (1992) and La mujer abstracta (1996). These works present a radical enough change in the poetics of Mestre and blend a fusion of Chilean southern cone poets whichhe was involved directly with, alongside avant-garde American poets and the latent influence of writers from his native region of León. La poesía ha caído en desgracia is truly a watershed in Mestre’s poetic discourse, which steered towards a new critical disposition; the poem “Metamorfosis de la rebeldía” demonstrates a subversive rebellion of poetry, evoking a time during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet where there was a necessity for the revindication of (poetic) freedom of expression and intricate linguistic play146. Thereby, if critics asks of Mestre’s poetry, “¿Hay un sistema? ¿Hemos de buscar la intelección, o dejarnos llevar por el torrente de las evocaciones y las sugestiones?” (Pérez Leal), perhaps the very answer is to highlight both intellect and evocation; that is, the responsibility of imagination. As is evident in the poem “Teoría estética” –or even echoed in “Metamorfosis” and “Ars patética”– much like the derridean system of differences, what the lyric-poet claims claims holds parallel with the postmodern individuality of difference; “Me persigue un oficio solitario, vigilar toda la noche una gacela, hablar sin seducir, no poseerla y verla irse oscura al diccionario” (Mestre La poesía

137).

en el que las cosas y las palabras se precipitan en el abismo de la crisis y de la falta de fundamentos, es cuando la palabra, pese a todo, debe ser pronunciada, venciendo la tentación del silencio" (Las letras van). 146 Mestre’s works and individuality, even in the early periods, are ripe with intertextualities and heteroglossal allusions, and a plurality of structures and signs; “Unos poemas son como escenas: estáticos, construidos mediante la repetición y el paralelismo, comienzan y terminan en un bucle que los asocia al mantra. Abundan en ellos las anáforas, las enumeraciones, los excursos que actúan como meandros de un río majestuoso e imparable. Otros recobran el aliento profético de un Pound, de un Péguy, de un Claudel o un Huidobro que se acercasen al hervor onírico de Rimbaud, a la inventiva imaginista de Gonzalo Rojas o a la herencia irracionalista del surrealismo francés de la postguerra: Ponge, Char, Michaux, Dubuffet, Bellmer… Hay poemas políticos, eróticos, paisajísticos, paródicos y narrativos.” (Pérez Leal) 176

For some critics in the 1980s and 1990s, Mestre’s individuality may cause vertigo or frustration –precisely when compared to the poetry of experience–, but for others, the heightening of creative poetic-narrative, continues the legacy of the historic avant-garde, written from the margins of the field of poetry. Linguistic sobriety and poetic metaphor, mesh with symbolism and a multinational repertoire, “todavía quedan huellas simbólicas, algunas gotas de esa lengua cotidiana que, a partir de Nicanor Parra, define a la poesía chilena.”

(Rodríguez Fernández 160). The Chilean influence in this period leads to a resistance or deterritorialization in his poetry, which is more evident in his later works (notably, La casa roja), and functions as an ideological resistance to a strict analysis of structure.

5.4. Social awakening: Rome, La tumba de Keats and the 1990s

The post-Chilean period of Mestre’s poetry in the early 1990s arrives at a critical shift in structure that would carry Mestre’s poetics into the new millennium. This evolutionary change is most evident in La tumba de Keats, where the fictional poetic narrative interlaces with a decentralizing tendency:

El texto, que es continuación serena y necesaria de un proyecto de evolución gradual y de

efectos dramáticos e intención apelativa de quien ve en los otros, muestra el reverso de la

belleza ficcionalizada en los textos anteriores y se resuelve en la figura del adiós y en la

disolución de un sujeto que abandona el centro y desaparece para poder reaparecer del

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otro lado de la noche, revestido de una nueva conciencia y con un nuevo fuego en las

manos (Nieves Alonso).

Verses of La tumba read to the following idea, “Bodas contra natura, bodas entre vida y muerte, entre nacimiento y madurez, entre hombre y animal, todo esto es registrado en el libro sobre las ruinas de Roma.” (Nieves Alonso), and point to the period of Mestre’s poetry that was written during and right after spending a year in Italy, as a recipient of the prestigious Fellowship from the Academia de España en Roma. La tumba was composed between October of 1997 and 1998,

. It is not long after La tumba de Keats is published that Mestre begins to take on any sort of

“protagonism” in the world of contemporary Spanish poetry. This process will culminate by the time La casa roja is published in 2009.

In contrast to Mestre’s previous works, La tumba de Keats is a singular, long prose- poem. Aesthetically, the poem itself is comprised of a monologue expressed by the poetic voice and focused on his memory. Ideologically, it is rife with sociopolitical rhetoric and existential surrealism, all of which is staged upon the backdrop of the Roman cemetery in which Keats,

Shelley, Gramsci and nameless others lay entombed. Mestre, or perhaps a poetic facsimile, is taken upon by an oniric vision while visiting the cemetery; beginning with a self-introspection and rapidly becomnigs a morose and inconsolable homily to the subaltern; “una imagen real del sufrimiento de los perdedores de la historia, la impotencia de una sociedad atrapada por las falacias de la ciencia al servicio del horror, la injusticia y sus crímenes” (Molina Damiani). What follows is a delving into a vision of Rome that becomes analogous to the New York of Federico

García Lorca, as it also takes on an apocalyptic and surrealist tone. The imagined destruction of the “metropolis” becomes a latent sub-structural characteristic, and cues on imagism and

178 symbolism are taken from Pound, Eliot, Whitman and Neruda, as well as influences from

Spanish avant-garde poets such as Pere Gimferrer (Morales Barba 186). The verses find themselves in a style reminiscent of Pound’s canto pisano (or the italian epic verse in general), as is evidenced in long stretches, “el cántico de las criaturas nacidas para lo vivo, el ardid de un himno para aliviar la soledad de los que serán destruidos” (Grande).

As in previous works, the unraveling leitmotifs continue, and so responsibility and imagination clash once again, “más allá de la prudencia y un poco antes de la locura” (Grande).

There is an attempt to recreate the ancient story of a journey that transcends the physical and becomes spiritual, while disembarking in a quest for truth, peace and an individual expression of the metaphysical; this trip represents a sublimated desire for inner reflection that the poetic voice experiences in this new place, as “El protagonista de La tumba de Keats enfrenta los demonios del mediodía que lo asaltan en el desierto que es Roma, metonimia de Occidente” (Nieves

Alonso). This time the stage is set over the lands surrounding Rome, and the deep history seeded of these areas erupt into the form of “un libro en el que la belleza y la verdad (a las que hoy les resulta muy difícil ser lo mismo) se hayan incrustadas en las palabras, unidas por el fuego de la dignidad de la derrota” (Grande). Capitalism, centralization and automatization become increasingly more of a point of contention within the poetics of Mestre during this period, as he attempts to ignite a newfound humanism and an enlightened linguistic language. The lyric-poet of La tumba peers back and holds in admiration the Romantics who are entombed in Rome, yearning for their vitalism and sense of citizenship that he believes is sorely lacking in the modern, materialistic, infernal, personage of contemporary western society. A socio-critical covenant between poet and reader is enacted, which is a far cry from that commanded by the realist poets, and is built upon a prophetic voice with deictic meaning, “donde la moral no sólo es

179 participada por el tejido de los significados, (…) un telar político que cobra su resolución estética irracional, expresionista, para mostrar las tensiones de este tiempo.” (Molina Damiani).

Irrationalism, deconstruction and existentialism all lead the reader to discover a sociopolitical aspect, both historic and poetic, seeded in the fabric of the text and a (de)humanizing avant-garde aesthetic echoing the sentiments of Ortega y Gasset.

To that end, the text opens with an epigraph by John Keats “The poetry of earth is never dead”. By evoking this keatsian verse, the poet aims to promote a different poetic sphere or universe: it is mentioned thusly, “me he apostado ante la guarida donde la divinidad no es un ser poderoso” (Mestre La tumba 15), “a esa tumba le he llamado casa y he cerrado la puerta y me he quedado a vivir en ella” (4), and “Este es ahora mi país, madre de barro, / un litoral inglés junto a los muros de Roma” (6). The new plane of existence –that is, the tomb that becomes the home– that the poet erects is a haven for poetry, a stalwart against destruction, and a place for linguistic and cultural experimentation or renewal; “Mestre derrota al gran mal, vence al aburrimiento en su significado escamoteado por el desliz lingüístico. (Nieves Alonso). It is at once Rome while not being Rome, a metaphysical realm that exhibits the responsibility of the poet’s imagination, and by that measure the sordid reality of a modern capitalist existence is examined while peering through a keyhole nestled inside the tombs of the romantics which function as the ideal for the authorial voice. What can be elucidated is an ontological concept of poetry not only as compassion to the cosmopolitan strength of the poetic medium, but also as a resistance to the voices of the hegemony and a hymn to an ethical obligation of the poet –“¡qué imprudente viento de vocales borrará la desconcertada / memoria de los hombres, quién te velará raíz sin vuelo, quién te escuchará oh voz sin boca” (Mestre La tumba 3)–.

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The opening verses of La tumba read as a lauding to revolution and a praise for a neoromantic ideal, “Esto sucede ante la hora izquierda en que mi vida, / violenta juventud contra el poder de un príncipe,/ llama jauría a a verdad y belleza a los puentes derrumbados” (Mestre La tumba 2), and soon leads the reader into a discourse of consciousness rendered onto those that are suffering, by the backdrop of neorromantic desolation, innovative language , and a continual infusion of the poet’s proustian memories. The introductory verses of La tumba de Keats additionally expose Mestre’s poetic discourse in this period of the 1990s, decidedly marginal and anti-systemic;

“Vivo separado del rumbo de las cosas, hablo del miedo / de un heredero alzado contra el

funesto monarca de las ciénagas. / No espero nada de los dioses, nada de la memorable

epidemia de sus jueces. / Soy distinto ante el esclavo y el enano, soy el mismo suplicante

y el eunuco. / Soy el transeúnte de la atmósfera, el anhelante oscuro del relámpago”

(Mestre La tumba 2).

In a similar show of anti-hegemony, La tumba de Keats by Juan Carlos Mestre contains a number of allusions to the Catholic Church, symbolized through the ubiquitous presence of

Rome. Reference is made to the “realquilado en la conciencia moral de la casa de Pedro” (Mestre

La tumba 4), and to “los que iluminados por la desesperación aguardan tras un muro / al monarca blanco / y ésa es entonces su abundancia de bien y ése es el arroz que reparten los dominicos la tarde del sábado, / la tarde reservada a la compasión por los emigrantes del Este” (8).

As in Antífona del Otoño a strong poetic matrix is established through symbolist imaging and an elaboration of fantasy-imagination: “con guantes de forense sale la noche verde de su

181 estuche / y la tempestad retumba por el otoño roto de las ánforas.” (2), “la imaginación hizo resucitar a Cristo al tercer día, por el río blanco de la muerte.” (3), and “La ciudad moderna mezcla de lo divino y lo humano desde el latir clásico” (4). For Mestre, La tumba de Keats becomes the re-vindication of a romantic sensibility, a link between the human pain and divine beauty, “la belleza, la soledad y lo íntimo frente al tráfago.” (Morales Barba 188). In sum, the poem stating“Mi vaticano es la tumba de Keats” (9), supposes the elevation of the poetic, linguistic and symbolist as a metaphorical “religion”, insofar as it exists as a grand fatalistic opera, a dirge sung to the human condition and that of a personal confession. Morever, one can find the ringing of ethical obligation, a platonic understanding of the vessel of poetry, “el progenitor del artista es un mensajero que trae recados de la oscuridad.” (Mestre La tumba 3), social commentary or invective (such as anticlericalism) “la fría lengua de los sacerdotes.” 4) or

“la calamidad de los pueblos” (4), a hope for that the marginalized, “duerman bajo el dorado palio de suculentas vides” (15), a sense of nihilism “nada puede el nombre contra su farsa inútil”

(5), and the judgment of the modern metropolis “Roma, la ciudad oxidada del oro del otoño (…) se inclina como una torre insegura ante el pensamiento de la catástrofe” 6). Through these findings, La tumba de Keats can be noted as a work that in various ways had begun to demonstrate his personal difference as a poet, a deviance from the established mimetic realism of experience. It is not surprising that after the protests of diferencia just a few years prior, the critics would first attempt to delegitimize the margins, before an eventual embrace by the late

2000s, a reality even mirrored in the followings books of poetry.

5.5. Prominence, liberty and crisis in the new millennium

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As the Spanish poetic literary field enters into the current millennium, the publication of

Mestre’s La casa roja indicates a new periodization and, one could argue additionally encompasses an evolution into the primary strata within the field. As has been commented previously, the work of this leonés poet would receive recognition when he received Spain’s prestigious Premio Nacional de Poesía (National Poetry Prize) for La casa roja in 2009. This event was featured in many national newspapers, such as El País and El Mundo. No doubt a surge in Mestre’s symbolic capital, La casa would be followed by La bicicleta del panadero

(2012) which would likewise receive literary prizes (including the Premio Nacional de Poesía and the Premio de la Crítica de poesía castellana) and critical praise. The award of such prizes and accompanying prestige mark the end of the previous era of hegemony of the poetry of experience, during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s.. During that time the national prize had been awarded more often than not to those within that strain of canonicity –to cite the most telling examples in this discourse: Luis García Montero (1995), Felipe Benítez Reyes (1996), among others. By the end of the 1990s and broaching into the 2000s, one bears witness to Even-

Zohar’s process of overtaking or secondarization, the primary and the secondary stratas invert.

The binary has been reversed, though in the deconstructivist spirit of difference, it was in fact shattered into interspersed fragments, shards, of which Mestre remains as a single –though vital– reflection.

Thus by the publication of La casa roja –ushering in a fourth period of poetic discourse–,

Mestre had become a national icon even through the margins (a paradox its own right). In regards to this work, critics like Rodriguez Fernandez will state that this action elevated Mestre to a new sociocultural position of importance with the poetic field; “La casa roja, este hermoso y necesario libro de Juan Carlos Mestre, lo confirma como uno de los poetas ineludibles de la

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España actual.” (159). While difference was starting to become normative, the poetry of Mestre continued to be sympathetic to the subaltern, “Su verso que late próximo a lo exiliado, marginal y duro.” (Morales Barba 190), in opposition to “la legislación de los burócratas” (Morales Barba

190) and in favor of those marginalized poets for whom “quien cerró demasiado pronto una ventana” (Mestre qtd. in Morales Barba 190). There is at once a continuation of his stylistic lines of the previous periods (exaltation of the esoteric or cabalistic, linguistic experimentation, etc.), and seem to mirror characteristics which to seep out into the field of poetry in the early 2000s.

It was during this period of poetic upheaval that Mestre’s La casa roja appears and reclaims the attention of the fields of power through divisive language, unique imagination and the well-being of the collective consciousness, In these more contemporary works (those by the end of the 1990s and through the present), mythical and symbolic language and signs, alongside a spiritual-cosmopolitan attunement, all house a critical conscience from the margins147 that resists the verticality of power and stages a silent, poetic, revolution in favor of liberty and dignity; that is to say, in this most recent poetic phase responsibility of imagination is at its zenith, “en Mestre la reﬂexión metapoética y la vocación crítica se aúnan” (Pérez López 209).

The resplendence of myth and erratic narration, representing prophetic incarnations and the discontinuity of common prose, represent a postmodern age in Spanish poetics and radical literary (and linguistic) liberalism. Especially evident in terms of the responsibility of imagination, the La casa roja showcases several of these defining characteristics:

147 Pérez López dwells on the significance of the subaltern position of Mestre, his resistance to the status quo, and veneration of poetic (and perhaps sociocultural) liberty –not unlike the words of the poets of diferencia–: “Mestre ha aﬁrmado que el poeta es el desarmado, el inocente, el que se atreve con el lenguaje de lo humano, el que ejerce una resistencia equiparable a la del diamante porque retoma palabras como dignidad o libertad, les arranca con dolor las astillas de todo lo que fue dicho antes sobre y desde ellas y las mira de nuevo como si acabaran de ser inauguradas, sabiendo sin embargo que la poesía ha caído en desgracia.” (Pérez López 209) 184

En su compromiso con la poesía como ejercicio de libertad radical, sin concesiones, y en

la espléndida carnalidad del verso a menudo salmódico en un libro de larga extensión,

formado por más de noventa poemas, Mestre ha entrado de lleno en el oﬁcio de minero

del lenguaje, arrancándole brillos a la veta negrísima del término dolor y ratiﬁcando la

aﬁrmación de Tomás Sánchez Santiago acerca de la responsabilidad de la imaginación

en su obra. (Pérez López 218).

Mestre’s individuality and the difference that derives from it, acquires a resistant and rebellious political dimension, an “irrationalism” that is not dehumanizing as critics would suggest, but rather the opposite. What makes La casa roja unique, worthwhile or perhaps different enough to have captivated the prize jury is its “ciento sesenta y cuatro páginas de divina locura y genialidad humana. Esto es lo que ocurre cuando ocurre la poesía.” (Zaitegui page).

This book of poems is viewed as an ode to the linguistic capability of poetry and denotes a sacred aspect to the textthrough a rich imaginarium which elicits both an intellectual and emotional response. Though not quite surrealist or stream-of-consciousness poetry –though faintly brushing alongside it,La casa is a creative bet that is not erred by lofty ambitions, but firmly planted within an imagined, utopic poetry that is sung with a hint of criticism (as in La tumba and La poesía ha caído).

Thus, in La casa, there is a conclusive consolidation of two distinct poetic paradigms in the discourse of Mestre: one in regards to the linguistic and creative continuation of the avant- garde, in which the leonés poet stresses the symbolic, metaphoric, archetypical-mythical and cabalistic nature of language that was the main driving force behind the works in his first periods; and the other, a rupture from this deterritorialization of language, through the expression

185 of intensive, cosmopolitan, sobering, intertextual material that becomes equally as significant throughout his later works. The latter is the ubiquitous sensibility of “social criticism” that is constantly being referred to when analyzing his latest works, and is brought to the forefront by different critics. A prominent example is demonstrated in three distinct articles of El País, which include Mestre and his most recent texts –including La casa roja and La bicicleta del panadero–

(while concomitantly demonstrating the sociocultural evolution and dissemination of the poetry of difference): El mejor antídoto en tiempos de crisis se escribe con poesía (2012) by Rocío

Huerta, Poesía y novela como resistencia a la legislatura del mal (2013) by Winston Manrique

Sabogal, and Poesías contra la crisis (2014) by Alfonso Álvarez-Dardet.

In the former piece, Huerta makes mention of certain trends in contemporary Spanish poetry as being the expression of the contemporary Spanish zeitgeist and an antidote to crisis of the time (which at the time of writing was both economic and existential). Poets such as Antonio

Gamoneda, Pablo García Baena, Blanca Andreu, Raquel Lanseros, Sebastián Mondéjar,

Francisco Brines, Vicente Gallego and, of consequence here, Juan Carlos Mestre, are mentioned explicitly as having a sociocultural critical role: “El papel social que juegan los poetas hoy, en una época convulsa y de desconcierto, puede ayudar a encarar los nuevos tiempos.” (Huerta).

The aforementioned list of poets, while not exhaustive, additionally points to the rise or neo- centralization of the avant-garde in contemporary Spanish poetry (most notably, a fair share of those named would have, in previous decades, been relegated to the margins or of non- influence); as the poetry of experience no longer is able to represent the will of the people, thus it has fallen from grace. In lieu of bourgeoisie realism so beneficial to the early democracy and catering to the ego of the reader public, the poetry of the new millennium is one of deliverance;

“La poesía no es una salvación pero lo parece, en el sentido de que aunque no pueda modificar

186 las circunstancias objetivas de ese sufrimiento, de esa situación, la subjetividad del poeta y del lector puede crear una liberación o un consuelo.” (Gamoneda qtd. in Huerta).

Thus the poetry of difference, which was previously relegated to silence, marginality and secondary status –regardless of its inherent potential, value or “canonicity” within the genre, had become a poetic savior in the 21st century, perhaps even occupying the new center or hegemony after a three decade diachronic inversion (or, as in Even-Zohar, conversion) of power; the heterodox becomes orthodox. It was not until spurred by the Spanish crisis, as the poet Nuria

Barrios bluntly states, that the cycle was torn asunder: “Desde que estalló la crisis estamos todos sometidos al mismo discurso repetitivo, al mismo mensaje, a las mismas palabras (…) Estos ciclos dedicados a la poesía permiten dar paso a un lenguaje distinto donde las palabras no pretenden crear la realidad, sino facturarla, expresarla.” (Barrios qtd. in Huerta). The poets who rose from margins to prominence in the 21st century and their fracturing tendencies mentioned throughout by critics resonate with the core treatise of La casa roja148. Mestre’s text manifests itself as one a necessary plurality and –in a bhaktinian sense– presents the dialogic nature of contemporary Spanish poetry of difference; a crossroads of diverse strains and strands with the poetic field. There is a tendency in difference to escape from the current of tradition and to break the center –a quality of postermodernism–, in this case espousing neither the principles of realism nor the cultural aesthetics of the novísimos. However, those who did naturally attune to this discourse were treated as dead-end poets, which serve to explain their historiographical marginal position with respect to the canon. At the crossroads of a heteroglossal poetic at the

148 Other poets harkening to the plurality of difference in 21st century Spanish poetry that have parallels within La casa roja include “ecos de Parra, Rojas, Rosamel y Teillier son al menos tan intensos como los de Ullán, Gamoneda o Antonio Pereira. Los epígrafes del libro, numerosísimos, van desde César Moro a Henri Michaux, porque La casa roja está habitada por muchos otros poetas: Claudio Rodríguez, Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Eduardo Milán, Anna Ajmátova, Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Olvido García Valdés, César Moro, Antonio Colinas, Huidobro, Mistral, Vicente Núñez o Diego Jesús Jiménez” (Pérez López 211). 187 dawn of the new century stands Mestre’s La casa, a vehicle for poetry as an exercise in freedom

(both real and symbolic). This work is a culmination of the characteristics and leit motifs engendered in the 1980s and 1990s, a mining of language and culture, ratified through the the imagination and individuality of the poet.

As a general precept, the poetry of the 21st century –that of difference which continues into the younger and so-called “poetry of the new millennium”– enters into prominence during the crisis, scandals and corruption in the 2000s and echoes the sentiments of the general public in defiance of the systems of elites, as Mestre himself comments in this regard:

La literatura, la poesía, también está ahí, para decir no, para ofrecer un grado de delicada

pero intensa resistencia a la legislatura del mal, a la toxicidad mercantil que pretende

convertir al ciudadano en cliente. Desobedecer la costumbre de los sistemas de

dominación, hacer inconsumible para el sistema una vez más la voz que desde las afueras

de la razón establece alianza con los descontentos y los débiles que, en la esperanzadora

profecía de Picabia, harán sin dudad algún día la vida más bella y por tanto más justa.

(Mestre qtd. in Sabogal).

Speaking to this new audience, receptive to the postmodern condition of difference and united by the crisis, the poem “Asamblea” reads as an apology to the working class that has been greatly afflicted by the corruption of the crisis:

Queridos compañeros carpinteros y ebanistas, yo les traigo el saludo solidario de los metafísicos. También para nosotros la situación se ha hecho insostenible, los afiliados se niegan a seguir pagando cuotas.

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A partir de este momento la lírica no existe, con el permiso de ustedes la poesía ha decidido dar por terminadas sus funciones este invierno. No lo tomen a mal, pero aún quisiéramos pedirles una cosa, mis viejos camaradas amigos de los árboles acuérdense de nosotros cuando canten La Internacional. (Mestre inéditos)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this poem was included in the anthology En legítima defensa.

Poetas en tiempos de crisis (2014) and functions a testament to the powerful link between zeitgeist and the poetry of difference. In addition to this anthology, with the permission of

Mestre and other so-called “postnovísimo” poets (including Ángel Petisme, Inma Luna and Luis

Eduardo Aute), a compilation book was published titled Poemas al director. 68 miradas críticas en tiempos de crisis (2013). This book was sent to the heads of those companies which, in their point of view, played a central role in destabilizing Spain and leading to the economic crisis.

Mestre joined this cause as he grants import to protest and disobediance, a quality shared in his more recent, critical, poetry; “Offering his poetic langauge to the disposition of the public (as in

Poemas al director or even with his performance in the oral tradition), Mestre’s difference – although he may still be considered a “minor poet” 149–becomes paradigm shifting,, and is echoed in such poems as “Alocución en la Academia de los botones chapados”, “Pequeña conferencia”, “Póliza”, “Lince Ibérico”, “Las espinas de la mandrágora”, etc., which parodize and strike at the bleak sociocultural and poetic situation of the most recent times; “no hay que ser gerente de una compañía eléctrica para oscurecer más las cosas” (Mestre La casa 16). Mestre now overtly embodies the responsibility for sociopolitical liberty and, concomitantly, a transcendence of poetry through it, a discourse “donde hay una micropolítica capaz de

149 To some critics, Mestre is forced into the role of a “minor poet” when compared to the poetry of experience, of the center, as exampled: “Esa lengua mayor, políticamente conservadora, estéticamente inmutable, éticamente hipócrita, es la que minoriza Mestre.” (Rodríguez Fernández 161). 189 transformarse en macro en cuanto el poema está al servicio de todos.” (Rodríguez Fernández

161).

Diachronically, beginning from the period surrounding Antífona del otoño and culminating currently with La casa rojo, the poetic discourse of Mestre has evolved from a focus on the specters of the self to encompassing the totalizing spirit of the collective unconsciousness,

Another work of this same period, La bicicleta del panadero and La casa roja, likewise demonstrates an evolution of difference, and an exaltation of a poetic and physical utopia. One finds myriad structures at play, transitioning from delirious irony, “las monjas embarazadas con la información divina me ofrecían un puesto en su fábrica” (Mestre La casa 48), to quotidian imagery, “donde la cobardía y las gabardinas abarrotan los percheros cuando caen dos gotas” (La bicicleta 3), meshed with a style reminiscent of the early 20th century avant-gardes, “irte a robar gallinas entre los escombros del público” La bicicleta 3), and oscillating between avant-garde prose and rigid verse forms (Rodríguez Fernández). What can only be conjured as a heteroglossic dialogue dancing between tradition and rupture, cultures, and even languages

(200)150. “La mano izquierda de Dios” from La casa roja demonstrates the evolved poetic style of Mestre, one of intimate linguistic fragmentation and deconstruction:

Entonces el poema se levanta y da por terminada la superficie del lenguaje, se apoya en la

escalera de mano, digamos el punto de vista desde el que se asoma al vacío, a cierto

grado de premonición equidistante a la agricultura de lo que llamamos destino, y ahí,

150 Example from the opening poem, simply titled “Poema Uno”, displays a polarizing of images and ideas, as well as a dadaistic attitude: “le dije las sillas se hacen insoportables cuando están vacías sobre todo me dijo después de los entierros sobre todo después de los casamientos cuando se van los invitados tienes razón le dije un martillo es un hermetismo en mangas de camisa que entra en la sala de lectura dando voces dispuesto a abrir lo que sea no es para tanto dijo él ningún libro abre lo suficiente la boca como para enredarse en una investigación policial no te creas le dije yo se han dado casos en francia y al sur de la polonia ocupada ya pero no aquí dijo él donde la cobardía y las gabardinas abarrotan los percheros en cuanto caen dos gotas (Mestre La bicicleta 9)” 190

destructiva, irreparablemente fragmentado por el mecanismo íntimo, tampoco alcanza a

dar testimonio de la mano izquierda de Dios. (Mestre La casa 64)

Moreover, the poet-visionary in the text confronts what he understands to be the terrors of hegemonic capitalism (a sentiment which had been latent since at least La tumba de Keats) in favor of human expression, imagination and dignity151. In the poem “El adepto”, the lyric-poet repeats in a psalmist tone, “He leído durante toda la noche el Discurso sobre la dignidad del hombre de Pico de la Mirándola” (Mestre La casa roja 18), leading the reader to imagine a central trope of this poetry to concern the humane (the responsibility). Additionally, there is a rally to the fragmentation of difference, both social and poetic, a distancing from the transcendental binary, “Si usted cree que el mundo está dividido en dos, ganadores y perdedores, está equivocado. (…) Si a pesar de haberlos alfabetizado tiene los pies fríos, seguro que es usted un patriota desaparecido en la nieve. (…) Si usted cree que traen mala suerte los epitaﬁos rigurosos, desdígase y escriba poesía satírica.” (Mestre La casa roja 15). This period of Mestre’s poetics utilizes imagination as a vehicle to improve the human condition,

Many of these tendencies come to a head in La bicicleta (as they did in La casa), which showcases roughly three hundred poems gravitating around the structural skeleton of a baker’s bicycle, a symbol of the precarious balance between man and nature. Linguistically, there is a subtle evocation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, linguistic play as the ultimate zenith of poetic creation, “The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world”

151 According to Mestre, “La reclamación de la palabra dignidad, en un milenio indigno como el nuestro, arde en la boca. El poeta lo sabe pero no teme calcinarse. Se pone en pie ante los verbos fingidos de la Historia y afirma rotundo que “en la sociedad contemporánea, dominada por los valores ominosos del capitalismo, la palabra se ha convertido en un arma arrojadiza con la que construir la gran calumnia de la historia”. Su lúcida reflexión incide una y otra vez en la idolatría del capital (Mestre La palabra dignidad). 191

(110). However, as before, this poetry also aims to redress history and redeem the disadvantaged or those cast aside, those on the flip side of the fields of power. The heterodox (the essence of difference, of the margins) promulgates the rebellious spirit of Mestre, anti-systemic and anti- authoritarian in his most recent works, that is, “La risa liberadora y hasta carnavalesca de Mestre sólo tiene un destinatario: la arrogancia del poderoso, la seriedad impostada del pedante, el podio no menos impostado de la autoridad y sus secuaces.” (Doce).

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s in the Spanish field, poetry was traditionally recognizable by a rhyme scheme, syllabic measure, genre, meter, form, versification and so forth, specifically in regards to the poetry of experience. The struggle for hegemony during this time brought on a de-evolution of the high poetic creative act, reducing it to more of a basic vie for power, prizes and symbolic capital. Mestre’s sublimated discontent152 and social partisanship materialized in a vetting and exposition for poetic (and even universal) egalitarianism (a trait generally subsumed under an ideal of difference) due to the aesthetic exhaustion and symbolic violence of the reiging poetic establishment. These circumstances, among others, prompted an outrightdisplay of the cultural and linguistic crisis in the marginal fields of poetry which Mestre had been demonstrating since La poesía ha caído en desgracia (and even La tumba):

Materialismo e igualitarismo serán también los fundamentos parejos de Mestre en el

armadijo eficaz de su poesía, sólo que ahora el poeta no pretende exaltar en sus versos, a

menudo torrenciales, una cremosa civilización reciente sino exponer el relato continuo de

una crisis. (Sánchez Santiago).

152 The discontent of poets that have been marginalized in this era –not only Mestre–, are highlighted in Mayhew’s The Avant-Garde and its Discontents, which poses the issue of sociocultural problems presented by the destructive and reductive elite few, evidenced through the “convervatism in contemporary Spanish poetry” (17). 192

Conceptualized as a creative exercise far removed from the outskirts of utilitarian or mimetic poetic language, the poetry of Mestre both identifies and denounces systemic corruption and poetic floundering (or “petrification”) in a purportedly democratic state. Mestre likens this happening to Rome at the height of its glory, even as early as La tumba, referring to: “las letrinas donde acuña su esfinge un imperio erigido sobre la violencia, / la posesión de los excrementos que rentabiliza la usura, / el ácaro de la mafia sobre las alfombras de la judicatura / y el gobierno de los mercaderes sobre los restos de la democracia” (Mestre La tumba 9). These invectives are significative of the larger issues at stake within the social mechanism of the late 20th century field of poetry in Spain and are often at play within the discourse of the poets of difference.

To this end, textually inserted into La casa are various significant poems, notably

“Telegrama, La gondola, Instructivo para llamar al teléfono, La mano izquierda”, and various others. Aside from its invective towards the malignant and power thirsty status quo hunting poets of the turn of the 20th century and an ode to poetry, one particular poem –“Telegrama a la engañifa”– serves to display Mestre‘s poetic predisposition craftsmanship in the later period, in that it disrupts the classic and recognizable structures of poetry. An engañifa, is an artful deception with the appearance of utility; in this case, the poem refers to how previously poetry was valued and recognizable by its construction, rhyme, syllabic component, and so on, but in the present, it is simply measured by its potential to acquire prizes:

“Engañifa stop acepto gustoso este premio stop gracias le doy al espíritu santo stop no

será un bombón envenenado stop un poeta debe ser más útil que ningún ciudadano de su

tribu stop gracias isadore ducasse por echarme una mano en la caseta de feria stop tengo

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miedo a los aviones stop iré por tierra en un barquito de papel stop los mares están que

arden stop tengan preparado el micrófono” (Mestre La casa 34)

Though still firmly entrenched in a difference of structure and language, the final result of this period is the responsibility of imagination coming to full fruition. If there was ever a possible cause for the (poetic) crisis, according to the authorial voice it may have well been averted by way of evolution and differentiation, as mentioned in “La góndola de los bucéfalos”: “El asesino contemporáneo ha fracasado seducido por la emotividad de su víctima. Antes lo había hecho el arte moderno disparando su rebaño de hazañas contra la multitud” (Mestre La casa 130).

5.6. From marginal heterodoxy to marginal orthodoxy

By the mid to late 2000s, there is a tangible, consequential, recognition of the poetic heterodoxy by the critics, as well as the readership and fields of power. The subaltern, marginal, poets achieve a voice and thus a revolution is staged, a case perhaps proven by recently recognized poets in the avant-garde such as Mestre (National poetry prize) and others who share a similar story in the field of poetry. The eclectic, fragmented, postmodern styled poetry of differences communes with the so-called “gran renovación de la poesía española” (Sánchez

Santiago). This was a renovation that began with an individualistic liberty in the 1980s and, unflinching, continued for decades. For Mestre, this difference was in one sense the free play and creation of linguistic-poetic structure once deemed to have fallen into disgrace (hence the title of the book La poesía ha caído en desgracia). As the personal evolution progressed in paradigm

194 shifts, Mestre’s intentionality turned towards the responsiblity of fighting against the center and anti-hegemonic or, in his own words, what had fallen was more than simply the poetic sphere:

“Lo que ha caído en desgracia es el respeto hacia el ciudadano, hacia sus legítimas

aspiraciones, hacia el proyecto individual de cada persona en la búsqueda de la felicidad.

La democracia ha sido secuestrada por el sistema financiero. Las palabras de la tribu han

sido rociadas con el insecticida de la demagogia que oculta el robo de los poderosos y el

saqueo a las clases humildes. Ha caído en desgracia la palabra, y esa es entonces también

la desgracia de la utopía del porvenir. (Mestre qtd. in Viñas)

It cannot be altogether assumed that Mestre’s sense of the anti-centric consciously aided the poetry of difference to dismantle the poetry of experience; or if it was rather just happenstance in the eternal pendulum swing of dialectics. However, it certainly demonstrates the importance of poetic evolution in the context of social change, and how this links to the Spanish field of poetry in the 21st century.

Meanwhile, Mestre –alongside those poets catalogued in this study– have been symptomatic of the poetry of difference, having an individual poetics that is not inherently (or overtly) tied to any school or current –“se aleja de los ismos” (Morales Barba 186)– or, as is the case with Mestre, flat out rejecting categorization. Instead, a free playing individualism fragmented from the center has been the modus operandi, a sequential continuation of the idea of what it is to be “avant-garde”, if not specifically following a textbook or practice. For the leonés poet, whose hallmark was an initial, yet fleeting, continuation of avant-garde surrealism and romanticism during a time of quotidian and mimetic schemes, he exalted the vanguardista form

195 in a show of difference, of individuality; “El habla de Mestre despega de lo cotidiano, lo despliega en recurrencias, ritornelos y versículos libres” (Méndez Rubio). These characteristics are compunded onto a poetic discursivity that is shamanic and fantastic, ancient and modern, rupturistic and libertine, alienated from that which may be considered normal153. In the case of

Mestre’s aesthetic, echoing a platonic thread, the poet mentions his intertextual nature and adherence to the zeitgeist of the era, “No soy yo el que gobierna el texto, sino el texto quien me gobierna a mí. Soy un “médium” en el proceso de la escritura. Recojo una tradición cultural. Soy una simple excusa que reescribe la tradición.” (Mestre qtd. in García de la Concha).

Because of his stance in the margins, and as early as La tumba, Mestre would state that he was relegated to silence, subject to symbolic violence from an “exhausted” generation of traditional forms, “Yo era, yo fui lo que las manos de un padre ante la generación exhausta, / el encomendado a la mudez, el imprudente ileso.” (Mestre La tumba 2). During this period of decidedly marginal heterodoxy, mainly ranging from the formative 1980s throughout the works of the early 1990s, Mestre’s opposition to the center found his works without suitable dissemination or critical response that otherwise may have been justified. However, even amidst the heterodoxy of heterogeneity, the leonés poet would not concede to adopting the schemes of the hegemony, indeed his irrationalism and re-humanization became the very venom of the new democratic and capitalistic state that he personally drew issue with:

No le basta, no, ser un artista de vanguardia, no quiere ser otro producto industrial de la

ficción de este tiempo: su propuesta se enraíza en el epicentro de la modernidad: su

153 Although Mestre never intentionally distanced himself from the poetry of normalcy, his rupturistic and prophetic structures would, for decades, be that which was not normal and as critics such as Molina Damiani have mentioned, antihegemonic. 196

conciencia se opone al racionalismo que todo lo convierte en mercancía: su

irracionalismo es expresivo medio de rehumanización civil. (Molina Daimiani).

Thus through the duality of the responsibility of imagination, a leit motif that grew alongside the

Mestre’s personal evocation of the poetic medium, his difference has culminated in utilizing poetry against the tides of power (Bernal 48), even if he should brush with the orthodox in the poetic field, still his unique heterodoxy remains in place.

From a familiar early period to a social aware later period, Mestre engages a plurality of topics from the estrangement of civilization, a crisis of language, subversion and reconstruction of the poetic form of the individual imagination. The poetry of Mestre has recently turned to be more idiosyncratic, hailing towards those that are marginalized, though always harbored within the shell of linguistic and creative imagination. As the poets of difference begin to meld with the new poetic generation of the new millenium, Mestre finds himself thrust in the center of the field of poetry. The leonés poet has entered the poetic orthodoxy while remaining in the field of the marginal by his own accord and eccentricities. Written within the verses of Libélula Mestre reflects about this otherness (that is, “extraño” or strangeness) that guided him to his present circumstances, an otherness which he may have even fully embraced, Antes de que me tomaran por un extraño, ya que yo no era el dueño de esa invención, / me alejé del optimismo de ser entendido por más de dos / y comencé a oír mis propias palabras como martillazos retumbando en un espacio vacío” (Mestre La casa 16).

Difference is strangeness, just as that which is different has always already been considered strange, and Mestre deems himself to be no exception. For this man from Villafranca del Bierzo, the role of the poet –or as he states, “oficio de las palabras”– comes to existence as

197 detailed in the poem titled El poeta: “poeta barba de maíz roedor de los sembrados (…) bobina de hilo de las cometas (…) cruza en ambulancia los campos de girasoles(…) ángel de los pesebres” (Mestre Inédtios). The following iconic verses of Mestre glimmer with the true aspiration and message of this poet, a message of difference etched in the stars visible to any who are willing to seek it:

Lo que el poeta dice,

lo que dice el poeta a la adivina,

al bisabuelo judío que dormía en la comuna

y aún vaga con su barba blanca por ahí

proclamando su consigna a las abejas:

Las estrellas para quien las trabaja. (Mestre La casa 36).

6. Conclusion: The Fate of the Avant-garde in Contemporary Spanish Poetics

“La fuerza explosiva del lenguaje –palabra en libertad– contra la miseria de la ideología.”

-Jorge Riechmann

198

The end of the journey nears, a transition has befallen, the spirit of man has indeed broken the old order and set about a path to transformation. Three decades of a so-called poetic and literary “civil war”154 raged and then calmed; a metaphorical battle of classes between the hegemony and counterhegemony. That the former was the poets of experience is largely irrelevant in this discourse, only that the outcome has lead to balance and decentralization as a possible conclusion is of import. As both difference and différance take center stage in the field, shattering to pieces the previous era and being reborn anew again in dialectic form.

Individualized and a free play of poetic language and structure, unimposed by thoughts of oppression or subalternity, by the desires of the state or allures of tremendous power, belay the risk of destroying artistic liberty in the 21st millennia. Thus the fixation on the canon by critics, poets and institutions alike has receeded due in part by efforts, consciously or otherwise, of poets such as Federico Gallego Ripoll, Juan Carlos Mestre and all the other unsung poets of the contemporary field. Poetry of the margins, composed from the silenced or invisible, deconstructing the bounds of heterodoxy with verses and poems that yearned to be written, discussed and disseminated. Through the sociocultural (re)construction of the diachronical metanarrative by way of those that labored and lived in that reality155, one can contextualize or represent this period in history into an observable gestalt.

154 Gallego Ripoll and other critics have referred to the this contemporary era as one of a civil war in the field of poetry, which was fought between those in the position of the canon and those by the margins (which historically and vis-a-vis Marxism is a viable metanarrative theory): “Es ésta la violencia del canon, ésta su inevitable tendencia por dejar al margen obras y autores difícilmente asimilables, explicables, clasificables o tan perturbadores que su presencia inquieta en demasía; sucede que con el paso del tiempo se van reparando olvidos (y se va relegando al olvido a tantos mediocres en su momento encumbrados) y el canon adquiere una peligrosa pátina de respetabilidad.” (Massieu 68). 155 What Richard Geertz coined as “thick description” or a “reading of a particular social production or event so as to recover the meanings it has for the people involved in it, as well as to discover, within the dcultural system, the general patterns of conventions, codes and modes of thinking that invest the item with those meanings.” (Abrams 183). 199

The rise of the hegemony in the 1980s marks the beginning of the creation of an elite class by what was likely (un)intended systemic design. However, those who entered into this seat of power (both poets and institutions) unquestionably and eagerly capitalized on their position within the literary field of the accompanying decades. What occurred a posteriori was the opening of a bourdeisian chaism in the post-democratic transitional field of poetry which allowed for and even promoted symbolic violence, self-legitimation, gerrymandering of literary institutions, the explusion of the “other” and the hoarding of symbolic capital. The power void left by the novísimos was filled by the long running statu quo of the poets of experience and those affiliated with said movement. These poets started by the backing of the insitution of

Granada and grew from the manifesto La otra sentimentalidad into occupying a place in the literary canon of the modern era. Their works were prized and sought after by the readership in

Spain at the time, as they reflected poetry of the midcentury and as their poetic structure was drawn in a “normal”, realist and dramatic monologue style156. The later evolution of poetry would confirm the tendency of time to obviate disparate poetic tendencies, or “a ‘olvidar’ aquellas obras no estrictamente realistas o no incluidas, en su momento, en “generaciones”,

“promociones” u otras amistosas agrupaciones” (Massieu 69).

The poetry of experience as a hegemonic force expressed their discourse by way of a set of tool particular to the field poetry. Most notably, literary anthologies channeled and archived the center into a selective ande exclusive Parnassus and the poets of experience were not the only movement that benefitted from their employment. The past decades saw the growth of this form which combined poetry and poets into arbitrary groups (similar to “generations”) for the

156 This action brings the poetry of experience to the literary forefront and “canon”: “Se nos instituye entonces desde instancias monopolizadas por los profesionales de la crítica (académica, periodística, estrictamente mercantil en ocasiones) los autores y obras que deben ser leídos, se nos anticipa los que perdurarán y se sitúa en los márgenes a los no elegidos, se les condena así a la marginalidad (la más perfecta es el silencio, el blanco de lo inexistente).” (Massieu 68). 200 expressed purpose of attracting more readers than an individual poet. Likewise, the dissemination of literary supplements was coordinated by select groups that socioculturally legitimized each one another. Their tribal coexistence and codependence in this fashion denied the flip side of the coin, the other silenced binary, condemning them the the shadows. Those in power continued to be supported by the state, poets turned critics, the “invention” of monochrome generations, and so forth, whicih were all the target of invectives, diatribes and denouncements from the poets of the late 1990s. As the field of Spanish poetry in the second half of the 20th century had the propensity of writing a (predetermined) or official “Literary History”, these were unfortunately myopic and exclusive, “hecha de olvidos y exclusiones; a dictar un texto homogéneo, un canon maniqueo tan útil para las simplificaciones académicas o escolares como pernicioso para un acercamiento libre del lector.” (Massieu 68). Even with these structures at their disposal and an official story that was tailored to a specific homogeny, the state of poetry in relation to the sociocultural zeitgeist and volksgeist began to manifest a different sensibility for poetry and the relationship of the actors within the fields themselves.

By the 1990s and especially the 2000s, this group in power was representative of what

Dionisio Cañas diagnosed as a general malaise in contemporary Spanish poetry, characterized simultaneously by technical competence and by an absence of innovation: “estamos viviendo el momento del siglo XX cargado de menos ambición estética en poesía por parte de los mismos creadores, y de una carencia absoluta de pasión y de intensidad” (Mayhew 24). The inexorable petrification of the consecrated poetry is accompanied by the uprising of the margins; change appears on the horizon in the dawn of the new millennium. What comes next, the systemic evolution of the metanarrative in the field of Spanish poetry, is the concept of individual difference as suis generis. The ample enunciations of a poetry that had been forsaken to

201 invisibility since the novísimos sets the stage for a new poetics, one that hopes to function as a true polysytem with in the field. A grand mosaic is laced with the distinct ontological and epistomological realities of all parts of the amalgam that was no longer content to write or abide by an official poetry of the state. Working from distinct angles and paths, the poets that had labored in the margins fractured the entropic system and synced with the ideologies of the new millennium in an egalitarian mode of discourse. This action lead to the opening of equanimous publication venues, diversification of literary and poetic support for all types of poets and through and the transparent presentation of prize juries (a strong point of invective for the poets of difference) and the public display of poetics justified against corruption via blogs in the vein of the anonymous Crítica poética Addison de Witt. The latter forum bastioned the underlying ideology and rationale behind the reanimation of differences:

Cada vez es más frecuente que los poetas hablen públicamente de la corrupción existente

en los premios de poesía e incluso que poetas conocidos, todavía ninguno de los

“elegidos” por el Estado, una su nombre a diversas causas. Esto era algo impensable hace

unos pocos años, cuando el silencio y la complacencia eran la reacción ante casos

flagrantes de malversación de dinero público. (“Crítica poética Addison de Witt”)

The poetry of differences was at once a pseudo avantgarde due to their individual and rupturistic voices, but has become more eminent and transcendental. The Spanish literary system has given way to the heterodox as it simultaneously and paradoxically admixtures into the present orthodox. The silent logos that lay in the margins –while always already equally valid to the poetry of the center– was finally to be accepted into and by its own legitmacy. They are

202

“discovered”, “incorporated”, “named”, the voicless, the forgotten and those without a power system of their own become awakened in the literary field. Yet still there is a veiled mystery and sweet allure in their status of becoming and perhaps because theirs is a story of revolution, a historical reality observed before 157 . The poetry that is rebellious and marginalized, the difference to the hegemony and the différance to the course of poetry in the modern age, melds with the poetry of the new millenium, sharing and genertically passing down its traits and charactersitics (quite evident in Operé’s Poetas del siglo XXI. Los caminos de la joven poesía española). Thus the poetry in the margins seems to be inevitably pushed towards the Parnassus when it may rather, subversive as its creators, stay within the confines of its own paradise of individuality, a personal Elysium. By simply inverting the binary once again, their renaissance would be ideologically dead; however, by way of objective analysis this conclusion can be postponed:

Si se cambia un dogmatismo por otro, nadie gana, o si se inventan influjos fantasmales.

Juan Ramón Jiménez advertía que, en este trajín de los antecedentes, se habla de unos

poetas y se imita a los silenciados. El apoyo en el lenguaje concluye por convertirse en

una propuesta abstracta, santo y seña, a lo que contribuye la crítica filológica con su

punto de vista y método unilateral aplicado al análisis. (Martos 4)

157 Their story of marginality is not the first, nor will it be the last, yet their sociocultural goals are unique: “Se integran así en la historia literaria los malditos, los olvidados, los que estuvieron fuera de las academias y aún ahora, a pesar de repetidas y tranquilizadoras lecturas, nos siguen inquietando: los simbolistas, las vanguardias, los renegados como Blanco White o Arnau de Vilanova, los conversos desde un Fernando de Rojas a un Cervantes, las escritoras que fueron margen en blanco (y resulta que estaba lleno de signos, poblado de sentido) o James Joyce, Walt Witmann, Ajmátova, Pasternak, Kafka... los ejemplos pueden multiplicarse en cualquier historia literaria.” (Massieu 68) 203

If one were to allow the canon to continously auto-populate itself ad infinitum, to not deviate from the established line of decorum, this would lead to a monotonny and evolutionary death of the field. Instead poetry of differences offers a rhyzomatic and plural line of expansion for the poetry of the 21st century. Indeed, even the very poets of experience (or any hegemonic force in a similar field position) are overtaken by difference and evolution –by necessity and by design– after having witnessed the fall of the poetry of experience many of their members eventually join in the play of individuality (one such notable and documented case is that of Vincente Gallego and others of that movement158).

In this regard, if one could then even potentially speak of a poetic group of “difference” it would be arbitrary and artificial and at its optimistic best, irresponsible, due to the emphatic individuality and originality expressedly professed and demonstrated by these particular poets.

Instead, similar to what many of these poets have accomplished, why not then break from logocentrist thought and bask in the free playing aesthetic of contemporary Spanish poetry that endures and influences to this day. The chronic and tautological condition of the creation of

“generations” and anthologies, alongside a dulled critical edge already discussed, will not serve to ameliorate a literary genre that is having difficulties with exposure outside of a small dedicated sect of readers and academic or critical circles. The current custom of an inclination towards plurality and not limiting to a regional or even national poetic atmosphere is the most representative of poetry in evolution and dynamism in the early 21st century. The repression of the other by creating these groups would only serve to further alienate poetic innovation, which

158 The involvement of even the pervious canon in a differentiated mode of discourse, if not outright counterhegemonic, has been critically evidenced recently: “Estas evoluciones, como vemos, son el resultado de un «natural» proceso de maduración en el desarrollo de cada poeta, pero llama la atención que la poesía de la experiencia no sea la culminación de sus poéticas, sino una etapa por la que transitaron en busca de su voz, en busca de una normalización del lenguaje poético del panorama español, lejos de alambicamientos, pero sobre todo en busca de la conexión con el lector, que es quien refrenda a la poesía de cualquier época, quien le otorga la sanción.” (Abril 11). 204 is a reality that the poets of difference had already contended to and hoped to rupture. Instead, the liberty159 and a polysemic difference is no doubt a benfit to all parties and actors in the field, young or old, margin or center, an egalitarian republic of letters: “Los beneficiarios de esta apertura del campo mercantil español, como decimos, han sido todos los poetas, y hoy día gozamos de un saludable espacio para la poesía contemporánea en las estanterías de las librerías” (Abril 10).

If one is to talk about these poets, it must be one by one and by way of their differences, not by an arbirtrary tag of supposed cohereance or tendencies, currents, groups or movements, nor do they have to belong to the Spanish field of poetry, but rather their own singular field that they create through their worlds and poetic imagination. In the context of the poets that began their journey in the democratic transitional period and certainly weighing on into the immediate future, there is not one single collective in their poetry: “No existe el colectivo poesía española: respetando las dimensiones del espacio poético, reacio a ser parcelado, es como reconocemos su valor: no preocupándonos por inventariar cualquier rincón de nuestra lengua, sino inquiriendo lo que se ofrece sin límite desde cada uno de esos rincones” (Casado Los artículos 23). Poetic form will not and should not be exhausted by one single monochrome vision, rather a distinguishing of voices that break or rupture the centralized uniformity, poets who are indespensible and necessary for understaning the contemporary metanarrative of poetry that blurred the lines and currents. The repudiation of a systemic catalogue by voices that had been –and are at once– out of the norm yet without pretense of becoming that norm.

159 The ideal of poetic and artisitc liberation or liberty is what many in the margins were fighting for overtly (such as Amalia Iglesias, José Luis V. Ferris, Eduardo (???), etc.) and others inadvertendly: “(…) evidencian que la poesía de finales de los noventa mostraba un afán de liberación de los complejos referenciales que la afectaron durante años” (Prieto de Paula). 205

The promotion of the aesthetic and ideology of difference and those who will be the inevitable protagonists in the following is to be defined by an eclecticism and heteroglossial.

Rather than an oedipal kiling of the father –the poetic forerunners– and the meglomanic seizing of the throne, the poets of difference prefered to reap and imbue from the decades and centuries past (which is, unsurprisingly, also a characteristic of the poets of the new millenium160). Two poets that well exemplify differentiation are Mestre and Gallego Ripol, but, doubtless, could have been any of the myriad unammed poets of the previous decades. The understanding of this literary era has not solely be gleaned through mere textual analysis alone but also as the writers acquire positions within (or around) the literary system. In this light, both Mestre and Gallego

Ripoll have contributed ample significations that allowed the construction of the narrative at hand. It has been vital and telling to trace their habitus alongside the happenings and mechanisms of the field of poetry, to take the author’s point of view in this sense. In the case of bourdeusian theory, biographical analysis leads to the principles and demonstration of the evolution of art and the creative project is shaped through the reconversion and redefinition of poets and fields into the “objective truth” (Bourdieu Rules of Art 260). They are but one of many contrasting strands in the Argus of this social and historically cultural study, as there is never a single force that leads to a liberty of expressions.

In this instance, Gallego Ripoll expressed his difference at the outset by combining his manchegan roots and upbringing with interests in the previous avant-garde and classic Spanish poets. A marginal figure from the outset due to not having a link with important literary critics or

160 One of the young up and coming poets of the so-called new millennium, Antonio Lucas, concedes to this point: “Nosotros no reivindicamos a capa y espada unos nombres', dice Lucas. 'A mi me gusta Gil de Biedma y adoro a Louis Aragon; me entusiasma Tristan Tzara, y me gustan tambien Aleixandre, Bousofio, Brines, Valentc.Hay una efervescencia feroz en este fin de siglo. Lo decia recientemente Guillermo Camera: no hay una estetica unica, sino una estela tan rica que tenemos el terreno muy abonado para extraer de cada estetica un nuevo camino.” (Antonio Lucas qtd. in Poetas del siglo XXI) 206 an institutionalized field of power, he would additionally suffer a double insularity during his roughly a decade living in Barcelona. However, during this time, the Manchegan poet would ally himself with other poets in an attempt to bridge the gap of subalternity and visibility, while at the same time garnering notable symbolic capital and publishing various books of poetry. Due to a discontent with the “civil war” of the poetic fields which had been brewing since the 1980s and the subsequent oppression and suffering this caused those around him, Gallego Ripoll would exile himself to Mallorca. There, he would impose upon himself a 10 year literary silence, though not stopping to creatively labour privately. Returning to the field in the early 2000s, he would eventually find his own voice and niche that both fought that very same oppression he endured previously and granted him entry into previously closed off publication venues. Always a poetic omnivore, Gallego Ripoll’s poetry of difference is one of continual evolution and reinvention, from dark to light, memory and emotion, there was never a need or want for a poetic ideal or center. The poetic word emananates from its own sublime position as an entity that is master above all else and thus poetry invents itself only moments before being written and in doing so, justifies this particular poet.

Beginning in a similar position, on the cusp of marginality and invisibility, Juan Carlos

Mestre began his literary journey. From humble beginnings in León, his poetry thrived on the plural space of oniric imagination and linguistic flourishes that was perhaps initially inherited from the novisimos and the irrationalist movements. A stint in Chile which would bring about a revolutionary change in both his aethetic and ideology, insinuating a more sociocritical nature to his discourse in respects to the dominant ideologies and a deeper linguistic articulation within the scope of expressing the fantastic unconscious. He achieved a modicum of literary success during his early works, though the critics of the hegemony always viewed Mestre as a marginal or

207

“other” figure due to his disobedience to the poetic trends, and in doing so reduced his symbolic capital and diffusion. However, this would not stop this poet as he would go on to battle on the vanguard by way of his poetry with works such as La poesía ha caído en desgracia and La tumba de Keats and eventually earn the Premio Nacional de Poesía in 2009. There is a responsibility in poetry and poetics as viewed through the works of this Leones poet, in which there exists a melding of play of language, experimentation of form and, when necessary, a sociocultural tool for critical change. For Mestre, the voice of poet imbues true meaning to the poetic word, they bring justice, piety and mercy, as art, now more than ever, is a guiding light for those that are willing and open to take the time to listen.

Having established two exemplars or archons of what may be considered “difference” –as well as reconstructed a metanarrative of the contemporary Spanish field of poetry in which they operate and create– one can itemize a few telling characterizations for the purpose of drawing conclusions in this case study: 1. These poets of difference achieve heterodoxy within orthodoxy, that is, the 21st century has bound them into the center whilst they still continue to labour creatively from a marginal, eccentric, point of view, 2. There is a assessable integratation of polymorphic aesthetics and ideologies within the consciousness of the new generation of young poets of the new millenium whom are able to build their own differences due to the defining actions of the past decades161, 3. Indirect and direct social commentary and rupture was and continues to be conducted in regards to the binary o counterhegemony and hegemony, or the haves and have-nots, 4. Many poets of difference toiled from a forefully invoked or relegated

161 A final point of the alquemic mixture of the “poets of difference” and the poets of the new millennium, in the more recent anthology of Bartleby, En legítima defense: Poetas en tiempos de crisis (2014), poets are highlighted who have elevated the logos in Spanish poetics and are invited to rebel aginst the system with their verses. The young poets of the new millenium are featured prominently aside those avant-garde poets that have come before, united in a familiar cause of social and cultural deconstruction; among them stands Federico Gallego Ripoll and Juan Carlos Mestre. 208 subaltern-marginal state within the field yet despite this have still achieved symbolic success and dissemination within the field or even abroad, 5. They adopted a countercurrent but individual poetic style and discourse beginning in the 1980s transition period that in varying cases did require, necessitate or particularly want inclusion in a homogenized group setting, 6. There is an implied understanding that they are one of many poets within an egalitarian sociocultural system,

7. Postmodernism that seeped into the cultural zeitgeist by way of the democratic transition continues to shape their modern sensilibities. For the poets of difference, their invisibility was perhaps the greatest blessing in disguise, a paradise of literary richness, independent of capital:

“Quédate en tu rincón, que no te vean, / no vaya a ser / que apetezcan de tu hambre, y te la quiten.” (Ángel Cilleruelo).

Even in the case of an attempt at classification of a plural entity such difference one must concede toh the epithet of Méndez Rubio; “La pluralidad, sin embargo, es tal que difícilmente puede ser resumible en pocas líneas” (99). As the so-called invisible poets of the margins approach the new millennium –after two decades of symbolic civil war– they likewise approach as paradise, a self-referential era that allows for individual and independent freeplay of signification. This is not the same, fabled, Parnassus so often spoken of in classical Spanish literature, but rather an intimate existence of the poetic medium at the dawn of the 21st century.

Like Todorov’s narrative theory or Hegel’s dialectic, a state of equilibrium and synthesis is reached by way of the disruption of the poets of experience and the recognition of difference.

The intent is not to create a defined “generation”, as this would completely decimate the aims and aspiritations of poetic liberty that the poets of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s battled to succesfuly bring to bear on the poetic field. Instead, one can simply diachronically demonstrate the breadth of signifiers that can be classified as a mode of differences, as a logic that governs

209 the heterogeneous characteristics of textual production in contemporary Spanish poetry. The reconstruction of the sociocultural field and those that inhabit it demonstrates the latent ability to recodify the gestalt of poetry in this epoch into that of a new generation of poets. Those that pronounce their differences, such as Federico Gallego Ripoll and Juan Carlos Mestre, are fundamental entries into this decidely abstract and polysemic community or tribe, where poetic center and meaning is continually deferred by the ontological essence of the very action of their creation. Their place becomes that of a veritable poetic Elysium, a fantastic and free haven in what once was, yet somehow continues to be, the margins where poets silently ascend to ensure the evolution and vitality of this genre as a whole.

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