Claudio

I'm returning to Claudio Rodríguez for the last chapter I am writing, making a full circle with my dissertation about this same poet, that I completed in 1988. I remember a graduate student thinking that Claudio was nothing special, and dropping a few notches in my estimation. If you don't think Claudio is great, you simply don't get it. I return to him with a deep sense of awe. He is to the second half of the century what Lorca was to the first.

Part of my argument is that Claudio and Lorca complete (make whole) the idea of poetic "thought" that is usually identified only with poets who have a more elaborate theoretical apparatus, like Machado or Valente. I am making Spanish poetry whole again by restoring this missing half, against the arbitrary separation of other critics.