Diez anos decisivos en la poesia espanola contemporanea, 1960-1970

Abstract

Diez aios decisivos en la poesia espanola contemporanea, 1960-- 1970. By Jose Olivio Jimenez. Madrid: Rialp, 1998. 247 pages. In the early 1970s, Jose Olivio Jimenez published with insula a series of seminal essays on a variety of mid-century poets-Cinco poetas del tiempo and Diez anos de poesia espanola, 1960-1970. These groundbreaking studies were influential for the respect and care with which they treated contemporary Spanish poets. Moreover, I think in retrospect that they paved the way for us to move beyond the canon. For the present book, titled Diez asos decisivos, Jimenez has selected from his many essays those dealing with books of poetry that after twenty-- five years he still considers for the 1960s. There are eleven such books which, in point of fact, were published in only five decisive years: 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968. The nucleus of these essays is devoted to the poets of the 1950s (Rodriguez, Brines, Valente, Gil de Biedma, Gonzalez and Caballero Bonald). Studies on three of their precursors-Aleixandre, Hierro, Bousono-and two of their successors-Gimferrer, Carnero-are also included to complete the picture of the decade. Jimenez' Introduction to the essays is his oft-cited study in which he reviews salient features of the poetics of the poets of the 1950s by way of a discussion of Ribes' 1963 and Batallo's 1968 anthologies. We then turn to the first decisive year, 1964, in which Jose Hierro published his Libro de las alucinaciones. Jimenez clarifies the characteristics of an alucinacion and studies how moments of epiphany combat time and the void. 1965 saw the publication of the influential Alianza y condena by Claudio Rodriguez. In rereading the critic's study of Rodriguez' penetration of reality to search for a valid truth, we are reminded of the structure and style of the Jose Olivio Jimenez essay: a commentary on each section of the book under study coupled with a careful selection of certain poems whose theme and style are fully elucidated and related to the poet's overarching concerns. 1966 saw the publication of four important books of poetry: Francisco Brines' Palabras a la oscuridad, Jaime Gil de Biedma's Moralidades, Jose Angel Valente's La memoria y los signos, and Pere Gimferrer's Arde el mar. For Brines, Gil de Biedma and Valente, Jimenez tended to focus on the positive-negative tensions in their poems: how love and beauty compete against time (Brines), how a mythic, poetic persona is constructed in opposition to the horrors of everyday reality (Biedma), and how faith and hope struggle against doubt and despair (Valente). …