• Narrative: Valeria Luiselli
  • Cinema.Scorsese, Baumbach
  • Spanish novel: Luis Landero
  • History.Anne Applebaum

The Spanish poetry harvest of 2019 has been very remarkable. Apart from compilations of complete works (Antonio Gamoneda, Luisa Castro), of the appearance of posthumous books (Pablo García Baena, Mario Míguez), of new steps in the wonderful and already consecrated stairs, always ascending, by Vicente Gallego, Lorenzo Oliván, Isabel Bono, Juan Vicente Piqueras, Julia Piera, Jesús Aguado, Antonio Manilla, Basilio Sánchez or Juan Antonio González Iglesias ..., of robust steps forward by María Alcantarilla, Olalla Castro, Sara Herrera Peralta, Marta López Vilar, David Mayor, Yolanda Morató or Antonio Rivero Taravillo ..., from the irruptions of Victoria León or Rosa Berbel ..., or from magnificent new voices from America such as Mercedes Halfon, Catalina González Restrepo, Hernán Bravo Varela or Legna Rodríguez Iglesias ..., it should be noted two award-winning books, emotionally very distant but twinned by the extraordinary quality: on the one hand, the depressive and at times desperate, but at the same time very beautiful, The lakes of North America a , by José Daniel Espejo, a shocking surprise full of real pain, nothing false, and, on the other, the bright and happy, from its title, A good hour , by Alejandro Simón Partal, a return to the best celebratory poetry.

And who is also the author of one of the best novels of the year ( The names of things , in Sixth Floor), Mariano Peyrou, has published a long poem that expands a curious poetic work characterized by the variety of tones and shapes. Since its inception, each new book of his has been, without exception, better than the previous one, and it has been several years since these same books are extraordinary, very remarkable in the panorama. Sometimes transparent , Salt and Study of the visible offered very colorful and vivacious, sparkling and fresh, ironic and ingenious poems ... All those adjectives, little compromised, serve me to say in a more or less elegant way that there was no way to understand very well those verses, but that really were funny, and left a sense of intelligence and confusion, of well-humiliated and imprecise reverie that was both a little modest, by the way, and I don't know if a little pedantic, by the background.

Voice temperature , in 2010, was an important first wheel blow, and a monographic poems about what it means to be a father: you earned seriously, not gravity, what you lost in spontaneity, and the result was a less fun book but more convincing, and in which Peyrou dared to get a little more sentimental, something that in general has aroused suspicion or directly rejection among the most prestigious Spanish poets of his age (« childhood ceiling heaven / tenderness tale of us »). Children in love was a natural continuation (I mean biographical), and in it he observed his son with that particular form that the author has to shuffle with ease the records of routine and surprise, from the most everyday to the most abstract ( but " Abstract is the concrete / out of context "): " Today / I have taught my son the word / 'et cetera', we laughed on the bus with the examples / and the sun was on his hair. I like to stroke her hair and cheeks and have her face close to mine, never to hit her . And in 2017, the year of the crab narrated indirectly, summery (that is, nostalgic) and strangely effective disease of his mother, in something that is not a story in verse, but prose poetry of the best note .

Now, Possibilities in the shadow is an extensive poem not circular, not exactly anaphoric, but almost in the form of a spiral, in which the love that the Argentine-Madrid feels towards a writing that, under the appearance of the playful and From whim, with flirting even with the absurd (or, explicitly, with the dream), it actually conceals a very shrewd perception of regions of reality that can only be accessed through the conjecture. " The more things are understood / less the world is understood ," he says, and there are times when the lucid thing that crouches in the playful jumps to the surface in a flashing way, with memorable findings: "to trust / is to challenge time , be in two / moments at a time ».

Already the general title warns that in the poem there is much of groping, of prowling , of moving the arms in the dark to get somewhere. And from the first verses we see ourselves immediately immersed in that speculative and seductive world that Peyrou has boasted in its brightest moments, both in narrative and poetry. The cadence of the poem catches and leads through the famous poetic logic through unexpected places, structuring the text with the succession of seemingly rational conclusions in its impeccable exposition but obviously absurd, although the main lesson of the book is that this nonsense is significant, a alarm clock of possible parallel truths, not only bold but, in its own way, very comforting.

Expert votes

BEATRIZ RODRÍGUEZ

1. I say it to see (Gutenberg Galaxy), by Sophia de Mello.

2. Crossroads of one hundred roads (Olifante), by Marta Eloy Cichocka.

3. I had a cage (La Bella Warsaw), by Lara Moreno

4. The first three years (Broken glass), by Julieta Valero.

5. I have inherited a walnut tree over the tomb of the kings (Visor), by Basilio Sánchez.

ANTONIO LUCAS

1. Gulbenkian Garden (Visor), by Juan Antonio González Iglesias.

2. The camera loves you (Visor), by Pablo García Casado.

3. Black earth with wings (Vandalia). Ed. Juan Manuel Bonet and Juan Bonilla.

4. Possibilities in the shadow (Pre-Texts), by Mariano Peyrou.

5. The first three years ' (Varo Roto), by Julieta Valero.

ANGEL NÉSTORE

1. Age (Hyperion), DE Rodrigo García Marina.

2. The first three years (Broken Glass), by Julieta Valero.

3. The camera loves you (Viewer), by Pablo García Casado.

4. The Mohs scale (Verse & Story), by Gata Cattana.

5. The inhabitants of the panorama (Arrebato Libros), by María Eloy-García.

JULIETA VALERO

1. Salitre (La Uña Rota), by María Salgado.

2. Possibilities in the shadow (Pre-Texts), by Mariano Peyrou.

3. Interferences (La Bella Warsaw), by María Ángeles Përez López.

4. Sealed (Lost Bullet), by Esther Ramón.

5. Las Furias (Eolas Ediciones), by Juan Hermoso.

LOLA LARUMBE

1. Gulbenkian Garden (Visor), by Juan Antonio González Iglesias.

2. Possibilities in the shadow (Pre-Texts), by Mariano Peyrou.

3. Fermoselle (Hyperion) bus , by Maribel Andrés Llamero.

4. A minor yes (Pre-Texts), by José Mateos.

5. Eternal dusk m (Gallo Nero), from Farough Farrodzad.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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