7 - Gender Under Erasure (Amparo Amorós, Luisa Castro)

Summary

Es que no no me considero, ni me he considerado nunca, exactamente una mujer.

(The thing is I don't consider myself, nor have I ever considered myself, precisely a woman.)

— Blanca Andreu (Ugalde 248)

The most cursory look at the best-known anthologies and critical studies of twentieth-century Spanish poetry reveals an overwhelmingly male canon: women poets, when they appear at all, are treated as minor figures or as problematic exceptions. The so-called “boom” in the publication of women's poetry in the 1980s, then, represents a fundamental alteration in the literary landscape. The vitality of contemporary women poets stands in sharp contrast to the rather pallid neo-conservative aesthetics of some of their most prominent male counterparts. While general anthologies of contemporary Spanish poetry tend to remain almost exclusively male, it is clear that these compilations do not represent the real strengths of contemporary Spanish poetry.

Critics who have studied recent poetry written by women have tended to assume that it is a gendered form of writing, a mode of poetic discourse that attempts to express a specifically feminine experience or identity. This assumption, derived from the “gynocriticism” of Elaine Showalter and other feminist critics, guides Sharon Keefe Ugalde in her interviews with women poets in Conversaciones y poemas: la nueva poesía española en castellano, a book which has become one of the most useful critical tools available for the study of recent Spanish poetry.