Page proofs for my Liverpool book, The Twilight of the Avant-Garde: Spanish Poetry 1980-2000. This is the first time the book seems real to me, that it will actually appear.

These are my acknowledgments:

Chapter 1 appeared in Hispanic Review (1999) under the title “The Avant-Garde
and its Discontents: Aesthetic Conservatism in Recent Spanish Poetry.” I am
grateful to Ignacio-Javier López for this accepting this article, and to Guillermo
Carnero for circulating it among writers in Spain. Chapter 2 was published in
Contemporary Spanish Poetry: The Word and the World, edited by Cecile West-Settle
and Sylvia Sherno. Chapter 3 appeared in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. Elena
Delgado, Jo Labanyi, and an anonymous reviewer were helpful in improving
this piece. Chapter 5 appeared in a special issue Diacritics edited by José María
Rodríguez-García. Without the help and encouragement of José María and an
anonymous reviewer for Diacritics, this chapter would have been much weaker.
Claudio Rodríguez-Fer was also helpful to me in giving me background on
Valente’s acquaintance with Celan and Heidegger. Chapter 7 first appeared in
Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. I would like to acknowledge Michael Mudrovic and
Randolph Pope for accepting this article, and Akiko Tsuchiya for permission to
reprint it here. Randolph also accepted other articles of mine on related topics
that did not make it into this book. His generous support of my work over the
years is greatly appreciated.

The research for this book was supported, over the years, by the Univer-
sity of Kansas General Research Fund, the Hall Center for the Humanities, the
Cramer family, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of
Kansas, and the Grant for Cultural Co-operation between U.S. Universities and
the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Without the generous support of these institu-
tions, this book could not have been written.

I owe a debt of gratitude to numerous individuals who have discussed
contemporary Spanish poetry with me, or lent their moral and material
support to me at various points along the way. This list includes Akiko Tsuchiya,
Marjorie Perloff, David Shapiro, Elena Delgado, Silvia Bermúdez, Amalia Iglesias,
Lola Velasco, Concha García, Ana Rossetti, Isla Correyero, César Antonio Molina,
Juan Barja, Guillermo Carnero, Jesús Munárriz, Juan Carlos Mestre, Antonio
Méndez Rubio, Jorge Riechmann, Steve Summerhill, José Manuel Cuesta Abad, Antonio Gamoneda, Jaime Siles, Laura Scarano, Elena Delgado, Germán Gullón,
Chris Soufas, Margo Persin, John Kronik, John Wilcox, and, last but certainly not
least, the late Andy Debicki. My past and present colleagues at the University of
Kansas and the Ohio State University—too numerous to list here—have also
been helpful and encouraging.

The participants in the Poetics Seminar at the Hall Center for the Humani-
ties have also been crucial to my ability to maintain a high level of intellectual
stimulation. Thanks is due to Roberta Johnson and Victor Bailey (past and
present Directors of the Hall Center respectively), for their on-going support of
the Seminar (and of my own research). Ken Irby, Judy Roitman, Stan Lombardo,
Van Kelly, Jill Kuhnheim, and Joe Harrington have been the most assiduous
participants in the Seminar. My hunger for constant intellectual dialogue has
also been fed on a daily basis by an informal network of “Poetry and Poetics
Bloggers”: Jordan Davis, Heriberto Yépez, K. Silem Mohammad, Ron Silliman,
Gary Sullivan, Nada Gordon, Jim Behrle, Tim Yu, Josh Corey, Stephanie Young,
Henry Gould, Nick Piombino, and about a dozen others.

Various audiences who listened to oral versions of the material presented at
several conferences also gave me valuable comments that helped me to clarify
my ideas. Also, the students in several Graduate Seminars helped me to remain
engaged with this material. Leslie Bayers wrote a paper on Concha García for
one of these seminars that stimulated me to develop my ideas on this poet.
This book would not have existed without Luis García Montero. Although
I doubt he will welcome a book that calls his aesthetic values into question,
I must admit that his energy in pursuing his vision of poetry has shaped the
recent history of Spanish poetry. If I had not read his eloquent essays outlining
the ideological basis for the “poetry of experience,” I would never had begun
this project.

Needless to say, none of the individuals or institutions listed above, least of
all Luis García Montero, is responsible for any error of fact or judgment in this
book. In fact, I have ignored a great deal of excellent advice.