Xavier Guillén: Poesía domesticada

Abstract

The emerging poetry of Xavier Guillén represents an interesting case in the perpetuation of a poetic school that, particularly at an institutional level, has generally been hegemonic in the Spanish literary field from the eighties to nowadays. This article attempts a brief stylistic analysis of the texts from his second book, Amo de casa (2021), revealing his reproduction of the main formal characteristics and his reformulation of the aesthetic-ideological postulates of the tradition of the so called poetry of experience in the Spanish literary field. It particularly emphasizes what Xavier Guillén’s literary work has both of continuity and individuation against that trend. To achieve that, the reader is provided with an introductory presentation about the origins of this school, as well as its main ideas about literary creation: model of poem, method of writing by taking emotional distance, the objectification of the poetic subject, and its concept of poetry as a genre of fiction. Among other things, this paper discusses the internal structure of poetry books, the issue of literature as a professional activity (the idealistic versus the mundane notions of poetry), and the prominence of familial relationships in the second book of this –now not so young– emerging poet.