4 - In Search of Ordinary Language: Revisiting the “Generation of the 1950s”

Summary

It would be hard to underestimate the significance of the group of Spanish poets who began to write in the 1950s. Poets like Claudio Rodríguez and José Ángel Valente seem to dominate the entire second half of the twentieth century, shaping the development of Spanish poetry for nearly fifty years. From a traditional perspective, the high-water mark for this poetic “generation” is the period stretching from the late 1950s until about 1970. Taking a longer view, however, it becomes apparent that a second period, from the late 1970s through the end of the century, deserves equal or even greater attention: these are the years in which other poets, like Antonio Gamoneda and María Victoria Atencia, emerge from the shadows, when Brines, Valente, and Rodríguez write some of their best poetry, and when the influence of all these figures becomes palpable in numerous younger poets.

One of the most influential books on this group of poets, Debicki's Poetry of Discovery: The Spanish Generation of 1956–1971, was published in 1982, and presented a well-defined thesis: that the originality of these poets lay not in their elaboration of a poetic language removed from ordinary speech, but in their “ways of using everyday language creatively, and of drawing on anecdotal events and personal evocations to forge new visions and to perform new discoveries through poetry” (Poetry of Discovery 18). In the pages that follow I would like to suggest an alternative view, based on a longer time frame and a somewhat different critical perspective.