It's odd how little influence Spanish poetry has on my own poetry writing. I've rarely felt the urge to write in a specifically "Spanish" mode, maybe because there is no such thing for me. In other words, I don't see poetry written in Spanish as having a particular center or essence. Lezama Lima is as different from Gil de Biedma as Creeley is from Larkin. Gil de Biedma's Spanish resembles Auden's English; it seems very British in its inflections. I don't think languages imply modes of thought, in any necessary way. Otherwise Frank O'Hara's language would imply the same world view as Thom Gunn's.

So when I think of Spanish-language poetry, I don't think of a single thing, but of a universe of possibilities as wide as that of poetry written in English. I feel close to some writers in Spanish, like Valente, but his Spanish is close to Beckett's French (and Beckett's English to a lesser extent). I hope I am beyond exoticism by now, even though my initial attraction to a "foreign" culture was doubtlessly suffused with romantic motivations.

Look at the way "oriental" culture is used in U.S. culture. We have "zen" tea. We don't have "Calvinist Coffee." The closest parallel is Quaker Oats, I suppose.