3 - Poetry, Politics, and Power

Summary

“Repito: una historia rutinaria. La mediocridad tomó el poder.”

(I repeat: a routine story. Mediocrity took power.) (Subirats 55)

Many might consider poetry to be culturally insignificant in the contemporary period. Although the audience for the genre remains relatively small, it could easily be demonstrated that more Spaniards purchase and read books of poetry now than in previous decades. The problem, in my view at least, lies elsewhere: despite modest gains in readership, poetry remains the genre most heavily dependent on “cultural capital.” In a climate that increasingly privileges market forces over seemingly outmoded notions of literary quality or prestige, poetry is bound to seem diminished in stature. Yet the genre apparently retains enough of its lustre to be a prize worth squabbling over: debates between warring factions of poets have become particularly acrimonious in the past twenty years, and the ensuing controversy has larger implications for Spanish literary culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

To understand what is at stake in these “guerrillas poéticas” it is necessary to put aside close reading for a moment and look at the larger cultural context. In this chapter I would like to explore the way in which a particular school of poetry, the so-called “poetry of experience,” has achieved quasi-official status in post-Franco Spain, to the detriment of other creative options. What is particularly fascinating about this process is the way in which political, educational, and literary institutions converge in order to overdetermine the premature canonization of this poetic school.