229 Spanish poets got together and created this collection of poetry to express how they feel about the crisis. I only need a couple of poems out of this collection for my research but you know me, when did I ever stop at just a few?
Of course, I read all the poems (which took several months because you can’t just gulp down poetry in one sitting) and I researched every single one of these 229 poets. I now know something about every one of them. Yes, I thought I was going to go nuts for a while because this is a lot of information to process but it was still quite enjoyable.
Even in the age of the Internet, it takes quite a bit of effort to find information about poets. You’d think a poet, especially a young and a yet unknown one, would understand how crucial it is to make oneself easy to find online. But you know poets and their otherworldliness. If their poetry is good, they tend to suck at self-promotion. So you can just imagine what it’s like to try to find a poet with a name like “Pedro López” among the bizillion and one other Pedro Lópeces who might or might not also have written some poems.
The oldest poet who contributed to the collection was born in 1925. The youngest was born in 1992. There is a poet from Bulgaria who now lives in Spain, several immigrants from Argentina, one from Peru. There is a young poet who left Spain for Quebec. There is a poet who killed himself in the year since the collection was published.
Some of the poems in the collection are quite bad. Several are amazing. Many are good. I’m finding it extremely hard to select the few I need for my research because there are too many poems I like in this collection.
Title: En legítima defensa: Poetas en tiempos de crisis
Year: 2014
My rating: 8.9
Clarissa's Blog 
“Even in the age of the Internet, it takes quite a bit of effort to find information about poets”
I remember getting really frustrated in earlier days of the internet/youtube if I wanted to look up stuff for some musical groups I really liked. Some of my favorite groups had names that were horrible to try to look up: X, The The, The Smiths, Yo La Tengo…
At least the The Jesus and Mary Chain were always very easy to find.
Now I’m wracking my brain trying to remember the name of a vinyl compilation of female reggae that I had in the US (bought circa 1986) I’m hoping a particular song would be on youtube but the song name I’m running into a brick wall trying to remember enough to make a dent in search engines….
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An artist should take to SEO the name! 🙂
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What’s your opinion on this piece?
“The Spanish royals have lived in much less of a bubble than their English counterparts. Spain now has a nuclear royal family: dad, mom and two kids, who like to spend time together. The king and queen have gone to college. As Spain strains to resist the secession of Catalonia and to quell a recession that has robbed its youth of employment, it helps to have a monarchy that seems so thoroughly “in touch.” ”
http://www.politico.eu/article/the-reign-in-spain-is-no-longer-on-the-wane/
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Juan Carlos played an important and honorable role in the Transition to democracy. Since then, however, the royal family has disgraced itself by uncontrollable and shameless corruption. It is still too early to see if Felipe will be any better.
I, of course, would prefer to see the Third Republic be instituted in Spain.
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