• 1968-2018.The last storm of Spanish poetry

It was a burst, a glow. Lightning A poem by Gimferrer announced: "The sea has its mechanics like love its symbols." He proclaimed it from Venice, and that was already different. Nothing was the same in Spanish poetry since then, whether or not he was in favor of that challenge.

Josep Maria Castellet served an anthology on a glass tray that stirred the calm waters of poetry and its echo was coloring that 1970s Spain. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Pere Gimferrer, Félix de Azúa, Ana María Moix, Guillermo Carnero, Antonio Martínez Sarrión, José María Álvarez, Vicente Molina Foix and Leopoldo María Panero. The book made a stir for and against, but the wound was already done and did not heal for years.

It was said that this book - Nine new Spanish poets, Barral editores, 1970 - was an invention of his prologue, Josep Maria Castellet, that he was, but that lacked harmony, that contained very different sensibilities, that it was only an artifice for make noise If so, he got it from afar.

Not everyone had published poems then, like Vicente Molina; some mixed pop and ideological tear, memory and desire: Vázquez Montalbán; with time Felix de Azúa forgot poetry or she of him; Guillermo Carnero does not want to know anything, or very little, about all that but maintains an enviable and constant poetic pulse; Leopoldo María Panero went astray between literature and life; Ana María Moix soon slid down other paths; Martínez Sarrión remained faithful to cinema, jazz, publishing succulent diaries without forgetting the poems; José María Álvarez was shining an edition and another of his Wax Museum and honoring Ezra Pound ...

And Pere, Pedro at the time, Gimferrer had a lot to do with everything. Not only was he waving the kettle of who should be and not in the anthology but he has kept firm the course of a ship in which perhaps he was only traveling; he with his hobbies and exquisite wisdoms, he and his translations, his poems as "a system of rotating mirrors sliding in harmony."

Half a century after that publication, La Esfera brings together new young poets, around the ages of the protagonists of Castellet's bet. A new generation of poets, of very different tradition among them, reviews those Nine newbies who, in some cases, have acquired the label of teachers. Each of them has been suggested a poet of the anthology, by contrast, and has selected from that author or author a poem, which he accompanies with a commentary on that adventure, or on that chosen poem, or on that generation that It was a mullion of poetry.

ANTONIO MARTÍNEZ SARRIÓN (Albacete, 1939), CHOSEN and commented BY MARÍA MARTÍNEZ BAUTISTA (Madrid, 1990)

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'The cinema on Saturdays'

Wonders of cinema galleries /

of flashing light between whistles /

children with their mom who were going down /

between panthers an Indian strives /

for reaching the most golden fruits /

ivonne de carlo dances in scherezade /

I don't know if Muslim dance or tango /

love of my fifteen years marilyn /

rivers of memory so bitter /

then the dinner was cold and cold /

and eyes burning like headlights /


From the book ' Theater of operations '. Ed. The mud bull, 1967 .

....

"It is true that all anthologies have something unfair and arbitrary, some inequality in the quality of those who make them up, and that it is difficult to foresee, from the bet that is made when making them, the weight they will have years later. In the case of the Nine newest, its crystallization as a literary milestone seems unquestionable: experimentation with language, irruption of motives of popular culture, hedonism, nostalgia for the idealized, individual search ... A turning point, a turnaround in the poetic landscape of his time, which we now look with an almost philological interest, regardless of the weight of his influence on each one of us. "

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Barcelona, ​​1939) chosen and commented by Rosa Berbel (Seville, 1997)

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'I will never have breakfast at Tiffany ...'

I will never have breakfast at Tiffany /

that strawberry liqueur in that glass /

Modigliani as your throat /

never/

Although he knows the ways/

I will arrive /

to that place you never want /

to return/

a photograph, maybe /

a huge smile like a city /

sunset, mauve asphalt, air /

that comes from the sea /

and the bartender /

we are served by a white angel, though /

know the roads I will never find /

that infinite Tiffany bar /

the juke-box /

where the last 'Modugno ad beats

an attimo d'amore che mai piu ritornera ... '/

and maybe everything is better that way, expected (/

because when you arrive you cannot return /

to Itaca, distant and alone, not so alone anymore, /

and landscape that you inhabit and usurpas /

never,/

I never want to have breakfast in Tiffany, I never want to get to Itaca even if I know the roads

far away and alone.


From the book A sentimental education . Editorial El Bardo, 1967.

...

"The poetry of senior Vázquez Montalbán has been very present at different times in my life. This poem suspects our individual and collective desires, the tricky visions of success, and has that lyrical irony so his, emotional and intelligent. It is amazing the topicality of the anthology; we continue to share, enjoy and update that popular space of references that they built.It is impossible to think about the most recent Spanish poetry without calculating the impact of the newest, by the very fate that the anthologians ran, by the earthquake of replicas and counter-replies that it generated and for having strengthened the model - now so recurrent - of the opening anthology ".

JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ (CARTAGENA, 1942) CHOSEN AND COMMENTED BY RAQUEL VÁZQUEZ (LUGO, 1990)

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'Bezahar'

The twilight burning in your eyes /

The hoot of sirens of your entrails /

Our tongues linking like sumptuous birds /

Contemplating your beauty and my desire /

I accept life


From the book ' The Tear of Ahab '. Editorial Visor, 1999.

...

José María Álvarez, responsible for one of the most celebrated translations of Kavafis, browses in search of that Ithaca called beauty. A trip in which the cultural references are both the boat itself and the scenery - those quotes that show his poems in the manner of posters in a room, as Castellet suggests in the prologue to his famous anthology. And the road is long - you have to ask it to be - but also the desire: maybe enough to finally dock where Billie Holiday bathes, at the beat of the moon, the stone of the Taormina theater.

FÉLIX DE AZÚA (BARCELONA, 1944) CHOSEN AND COMMENTED BY SERGIO NAVARRO (MARBELLA, 1992)

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'VIII. Silence'

Silence/

I remember a rumble /

many glasses of water do not make waves /

thirst is a rumble /

there goes Maritornes /

many that go /

they don't make a word /

to have is a rumble /

the voice is not mine /

many of mine don't make a me /

the roar of a me /

it deafens only its owner /


From the book ' Language of lime '. Editorial Viewer, 1972.

... Some poems of the latest aesthetic, and especially those of Félix de Azúa, propose a certain aesthetic experience that attracts my attention strongly: they are trips to the outskirts of the voice. In these poems, the ego leaves room for the word of an other to emerge, and this friction between the ego and the other generates poetic electricity. During that instant, two different worlds line up and communicate: Maritornes, possibly the girl from the sale of Don Quixote, appears with a chant in a verse that is, at the same time, everyday expression and cultural reference, but also bursts into the tone collected, meditative, almost presocratic of the rest of the poem, crammed into verses of precise and dizzying goldsmithing as "I remember a rumble." I think that this experience of the other in the one, as imaginative as linguistic, with its good dose of irony, is a valuable lesson of the newest aesthetic against quartered in closed worlds.

Pere Gimferrer (Barcelona, ​​1945) chosen and commented by Andrés Catalán (Salamanca, 1983)

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'London bridge'

-Is it you, friend? -said./

-Wish my top hat luck./

A glass dahlia /

He drew a green line in my gray eye.

The sky was like a nickel owl.

-Bye, friend -I said./

-Put a loaf and an egg yolk in my bowler hat. /

A light bulb winked among the acanthus leaves.

My heart lay like a rose on the Thames. /


From the book ' Burning the sea '. Editorial El Bardo, 1968.

... This little poem by Gimferrer collects some of the things I prefer from his poetry. Some Lorca air mixed with some Eliot. My relationship with the newest has changed over time, from the rejection of their solemnity to the admiration for their bravery, but today the poetry that I prefer within this group is precisely that of Gimferrer, along with that of another contemporary who I did not pick up Castellet's famous anthology: that of José Miguel Ullán. From this generation, above all, I learned that also the aesthetic experience - literature, art, cinema - were also part of the life experiences that deserved to be told in a poem.

VICENTE MOLINA FOIX (ELCHE, 1946) CHOSEN AND COMMENTED BY JUAN MARÍA PRIETO (CÓRDOBA, 1982)

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'Marcel Proust'

Searching, searching, found, indeed, /

curled up between the folds of the sheet, /

his morning sex, the little and mocking, /

that sent him gestures as if he wanted to continue his rest.

Proust, however, showed himself that inflexible morning.

and put it on (using a wooden dipper /

and of the zinc handle), /

and then adjust the skirts of the redingote /

pronouncing the driver's last name decisively, /

«Fontainebleau» ./


From the book ' The realist spies '. Peninsula Peninsula, 1990.

... Vicente Molina Foix reveals the poetic truth far from all poetics, letting the verse speak for itself. His poetry is a naked ziggurat, a Lovecraft that becomes Elvis, a lover who escapes but does not subside. His verse extends the limits of the latest aesthetic with an expressive, ironic and essentialist culturalism. A language that updates the sensory possibilities between man and poem, and at the same time accommodates fantasy, an insurgent Ganymede or proustian erectile activity. In each poem, the frames of an ingenious voyeur who boldly exercises his eyes.

GUILLERMO CARNERO (VALENCIA, 1946) CHOSEN AND COMMENTED BY ESTEFANÍA CABELLO (CÓRDOBA, 1993)

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Fragment of 'Florentine Letter'

I invented you, and I believed. Your light was mine, /

the light that bathes the mirage /

to which the blind man's orphan clings /

how the earth absorbs the gift of water; /

I have been able to forget you but I keep /

the halo of your oblivion intact, /

and if it is nature that the almond tree /

dawn on your own snowy flower, /

fallen memories rot and germinate /

on its snowy night of words.

Woman in front of the mirror, painted by Delvaux, /

He will not be able to redeem you nakedness or dress, /

but you will live thanks to my verses, /

although without name, mute silhouette, /

shadow behind a glass, moonbeam /

trembling dying at the bottom of a well.


Fragment of the book ' Carta Florentina '. Vandalia Collection, 2018.

... Guillermo Carnero is the living image of the Borgiano Maker. He is the swan, the lake where it is reflected and the body that loves and knows and knew loved. But, above all this, it is the voice that sings it with the exact words. Here is a fragment of the Florentine Letter, the last of the poems published by Carnero, a single continuous poem of 757 verses. In him the magisteriality, the experience and the intuition converge - it seems that divine -, and that only he knows how to represent in this way without glimpse of macula. Imaginary and inexhaustible voice.

ANA MARÍA MOIX (BARCELONA, 1947) CHOSEN AND COMMENTED BY UNAI VELASCO (BARCELONA, 1986)

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'The heart of Charo floats on the waters of the Delta ...'

The heart of Charo floats on the waters of the Delta like a endamascada flower.

She was killed at dawn. On the train rails /

fragments of the diary of his love have been found. Stories /

full moon, impossible calligraphy, crucified Christ, what happened? /

Adamo is silent in Olympia and the nuns of Sacred /

Heart cover the mutilated body with orange blossom flowers.

What a strange story that of some schoolgirls./


From the book ' Ballads of Sweet Jim '. Editorial El Bardo, 1969.

... I discovered the newest in an "extended" anthology of the time in 2004, so at first (the myths) I made the journey in reverse: for me they were equally credible Diego Jesús Jiménez and Manuel Padorno than Ram and Gimferrer. I read Ana María Moix well (the little poetry she wrote) a few years later, coinciding with Bartleby's reissue of her Sweet Jim Ballads , and I even had the opportunity to cross a couple of emails with her. Although my reading of the newest happened, as I say, within a more extensive anthology, surely that reading has been for the moment the most decisive in terms of influence.

LEOPOLDO MARÍA PANERO (MADRID, 1948) CHOSEN AND COMMENTED BY XAIME MARTÍNEZ (OVIEDO, 1993)

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'I'd like to be a redskin'

The infinite plain and the sky its reflection.

I'd like to be a redskin./

Sometimes the cities without air sometimes arrive without noise /

the whinny of an onagro or the jogging of a bison.

I'd like to be a redskin./

Sitting Bull is dead: no drums /

to announce their arrival in the Great Prairies.

I'd like to be a redskin./

The iron horse crosses now without fear /

deserts scorched with silence. Wish/

of being red skin./

Sitting Bull is dead and there are no drums /

to make him come back from the realm of shadows.

I'd like to be a redskin./

He crossed a last rider the infinite /

plain, left behind vain /

Polvareda, which later fell apart in the wind.

I'd like to be a redskin./

In the Reservation does not nest /

rattlesnake, but abandonment./

I'D LIKE TO BE A REDSKIN./

(Sitting Bull has died, the drums shout it without waiting for an answer).


From the book ' That's how Carnaby Street was founded '. Ocnos editorial, 1970.

... Do we still have Leopoldo María Panero close? Undoubtedly yes: his radical thinking about the connections between words and life, or his vindication of the stultifera nauis that constitutes literature are proof of that. Leopoldo María, like a postmodern Dulle Griet, leads a group of poets to prey, at least, the prelude to hell (poets are all and hell is the world above). But in a less obvious aspect, he had a great knowledge of pulp literature, and integrated (or made collide) the languages ​​of pop and high culture, as seen in the poem. This western kafka is, to a large extent, our heritage.

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