La sombra y la apariencia

(281) Andrés Sánchez Robayna. La sombra y la apariencia. Barelona: Tusquets. 233 pp.

I got a defective copy of this so I don't have a date for it. All the poetry is there, just some of the preliminary matter is missing.

ASR is one of the main poets in the line derived from Valente. He edited the Insulas extrañas anthology with Valente, Varela, and Milán. This is a huge and intense book, although not really 233 pages of poetry since Tusquets won't begin any poem on an even-numbered page. I'd really have to devote about twice as much as the two hours I spent with it to do it justice. The problem is that a poem in the essentialist mode practiced by Sánchez Robayna, if it is even a little bit short of perfect, even a little too derivative of Valente or Lezama, becomes intolerable.