Description
Book SynopsisLuis García Montero (Granada, 1958) is one of the most read and influential Spanish writers today. He is an essayist, fiction writer, journalist, professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Granada, and, principally, a poet. He has received numerous important honors, like the National Poetry Prize (1994) and the National Critic’s Prize (2003), both in Spain, and the Poets of the Latin World Prize (2010), in Mexico. He has published eleven books of poetry, represented in The World So Often, his first anthology in English.
Luis García Montero’s poetry has commonly been considered – even by the author himself – as realist, yet this is a misinterpretation. His poetic subject doesn’t try to trap the reader in an illusory world offered up as natural, but rather to break with the automatic perception of things and facts, and so avoid catharsis. What’s crucial here is the use of a language that does not try to be transparent, a simple instrument of communication, and that risks its neck to be noticed. It’s a language that is both reflection and matter, and thus, has the agency to change things, the capacity to transform. Moreover, this language is not limited to the lyrical tradition, it doesn’t discriminate against words in any way, it becomes democratized. By combining prosaism and tropological density, it searches for a discourse with a greater power of representation and participation. In short, García Montero’s work achieves a balance between sentimental rigor and intellectual outpouring, rejects solipsism, and goes deeper into dialogical poetry.
Table of Contents
- Luis García Montero, the Poetry of Experience and Something More
- FROM TRISTIA
- The Cars
- Homage
- The Scene of the Crime
- FROM FOREIGN GARDEN
- To Name Us (1941)
- Like Each Morning
- To Federico, with Some Violets
- FROM COMPLICIT JOURNAL
- Invitation
- First Book
- Second Book
- Invitation to Return
- FROM THE FLOWERS OF COLD
- Crossed-Out Song
- Bitter Song
- Song with No One
- Song of Mist
- Evicted Song
- Night Song
- Verlaine Song
- Furniture Store
- Loose Adaptation of Immortality
- Nocturne
- FROM SEPARATE ROOMS
- The Traveler’s Reasons
- The Mirrors
- First Day of Vacation
- The World So Often
- The Insomnia of Jovellanos
- FROM COMPLETELY FRIDAY
- Monday Man with a Secret
- Confessions
- August’s City
- Doubtful Urban Geography
- Tuesday and Literature
- Saturday Night Crime
- Impossible Song
- The City
- The Car
- Immortality
- The Night
- The Past
- Poetry
- Politics
- Old Age
- FROM INNER LIFE OF THE SNAKE (2003)
- On Turning Forty
- Corner 40 Song
- Sun Song
- Waiting Song
- 2001 Song
- Pornographic Song
- New Year’s Eve (1940, 1970, 2000)
- FROM EYESTRAIN
- Hometown
- One Language
- First Verses
- New York
- The Professor
- Children
- Market Memories
- Anniversary (2004)
- Memory of Happiness (A Beach in Rota)
- My Future and Heraclitus
- Prints
- Translator Notes
