Spanish Poetry Movements: From 1955 to Today

1. Poesía 60: Promotion or Children of War Generation

Characteristics:

• Poetry as knowledge or experience; presence of intimacy, love for remembrance, expression of subjectivity.
• Ethnic concern about the Spanish situation, manifesting dissent critically, but detached, ironic, and sometimes skeptical.
• Language: Natural but carefully crafted, moving away from prosaic social poetry.
• Themes: Personal and intimate experience (love, loneliness, friendship, life).
• Metric: Heroic verse, free verse of 5 and 7 syllables.

Key Poets:

• Ángel González: Conversational tone, irony, dry humor to express complaint (e.g., Harsh World).
• José Agustín Goytisolo: Exploration of ethical concerns of privacy (e.g., Psalm in the Wind).
• Jaime Gil de Viedma: (Barcelona School) Conversational verses combined with precise and elegant expression (e.g., Travel Companion).
• José Angel Valente: Meditative verses with thick and sober language (e.g., Memory and Signs).

2. Poesía 70: Experimentalism (The '70s Generation)

Features:

• Experimental poetry definitively breaks with realism.
• Mood is provocative, aligning with interwar avant-garde motifs.
• Cultured tone, poems aimed at a minority audience.
• Anthology Reference: Nine Newest Spanish Poets (José María Alvarez, Felix de Azua, Guillermo Carnero, Pere Gimferrer, Antonio Martínez Sarrión, Ana María Moix, Vicente Molina Foix, Leopoldo María Panero, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán).

Topics:

• Consumer Society: Heroes of cinema, sports, song, and politics (e.g., Che Guevara treated as a consumption object). This reworking of mass media clichés involves frivolity and display, but also irony and nonconformity.
• Metapoetic Reflection: Poetry as an absolute value.
• Search for Expressive Possibilities: Rhythmic and musical aspects; structural rupture with speech logic; return to surrealist procedures like free verse, collage, or regional writing.

3. Poesía 80s to the Present: Varied Trends

Current Directions:

• Trends exist outside schools, standards, instructions, and fashion.
• Neosimbolism or Intimate Romanticism.
• Experimental Avant-garde (Surrealism) or Baroque-Classical Culture (e.g., Luis Antonio de Villena).
• Minimalism or Conceptual Poetry.
• Urban Realistic Poetry (followers of Gil de Viedma).