9 - Concha García: The End of Epiphany

Summary

Left out at the last minute of Ramón Buenaventura's Las diosas blancas, the controversial anthology that helped to foster the so-called “boom” in women's poetry in the 1980s, Concha García has gained recognition more gradually than some of her more celebrated contemporaries. Her poetry, which can seem off-putting, tedious, or even grotesque on occasions, offers neither immediate sensory gratification nor the expectation of a transcendent epiphany. Despite these seemingly “unattractive” qualities, her work has gained a small but significant following. She has published nine books of poetry since the late 1980s and been included in several anthologies. Concha García's work can be divided into two main stages. After an early book, Por mí no arderán los quicios ni se quemarán las teas, she published a cycle usually described as a trilogy: Otra ley (1987), Ya nada es rito (1988), and Desdén (1990). The second phase would begin with Pormenor (1993) and extend toward her most recent book (as of this writing), Lo de ella (2003). (She is also the author of a 2001 novel entitled Miamor. com.) García is a prolific writer whose poetry continues to develop, but at this point her work is substantial enough to merit more serious attention than it has received thus far.

Criticism of García's poetry can be found in the introductions to Cuántas llaves and Árboles que ya florecerán, by Manuel Vásquez Montalbán and Olvido García Valdés, respectively.