Postmodern Metapoetry and the Replenishment of the Spanish Lyrical Genre, 1980-2000 (review)

This slim yet substantial study of Spanish poetry written during the last two decades of the 20^th century argues against the opinion that after the so-called Generation of 27 and the novísimos, the poetic production in Spain shows all the signs of literary exhaustion. Appropriating for poetry the term of "replenishment" that John Barth applies to fiction, Matthew Marr sets out to prove that this recent poetry represents a true source of creative dynamism. Focusing on meta-poetry, a strategy commonly associated with the novísimos and Modernism, Marr's goal is to show the different way 1980s poets make use of this self-conscious strategy in their postmodern con-text. The 1980s poetic group infuses metapoetry with humor, self-derision and the demythologiz-ing of "sacred cows" in the cultural arena. The high-brow artistic pretensions, exclusion of the reader, teleological emphasis, and crisis mental-ity of Modernism are left behind. Instead, this group brings energy to poetry by emphasizing the process over the product, by the sardonic tone of many of these poems, and by involving the reader in the creative process (what poet Jon Juaristi has referred as "pacto realista" between author and reader). For the 1980s group, meta-poetry is not so much an anguished reflection on language's uselessness, as in Modernism, but a way to experiment with the process of writing and to invite the reader to participate.

If Bourdieu, Hutcheon, Calinescu, Cano Ballesta, and Lanz, among others, provide the critical backdrop for Marr's theoretical exposi-tions, among critics of modern Spanish poetry it is Jonathan Mayhew's negative stance vis-à-vis recent Spanish poetry that Marr's study most directly opposes. While both Mayhew and Marr focus on self-consciousness in their stud-ies, Marr concentrates on poems rather than figures, and builds his argument on asserting the artistic value of a group Mayhew discards for lack of creativity. Marr's analyses of poems by Salvago, García Montero and Gallego, for example, overcome the danger, already noted by Juan José Lanz, that these accessible poems may turn the reader into a mere voyeur satisfied with the surface meaning. Marr, instead, explores the various semantic layers convincingly enough to leave one wondering whether the critic's read-ing is more creative than the actual poems. It is refreshing to find in these poems the return to ordinary, everyday concerns, the poets's unas-suming attitude, and their critical metapoetry addressed, in general, to the excessive rhetoric, exotism, attention to the past and culturalist pretensions in the novísimos. But it is also true that, in the best postmodern fashion, most po-ems show dependency on the poetic motifs they subvert, while their dynamism relies mostly on irreverent wit and parodic tone, and in an effort to close the gap between art and life which at times forgets the role of form in poetry.

However, Marr is right in crediting the 1980s group with paying attention to the reader, and denouncing the novísimos for losing themselves in questions of relations between signifier and signified at the expense of reader-ship outside the scholarly devotees. The enjoy-ment in the 1980s group is tied together with the performative nature of this poetry. Benítez Reyes and Marzal illustrate how to weave the actual process of writing with all the corollaries surrounding it, no matter their triviality, and García Montero exposes the falsity involved in the so-called sincerity and spontaneity in poetic expression by asserting art's simulacrum. The "joyful wisdom" Marr finds in the humor of the 1980s group is embodied in Roger Wolfe. Wolfe dismantles commonly accepted values, such as the relevance of the poet's function, the sacred-ness of poetry, and the nature of what is "poetic." Although the number of poets here considered is necessarily limited, it is unfortunate that no female poet made the final cut, especially in a group with such diverse tendencies (Aurora...