25 may 2009

One thing I have always admired about Ullán is that he doesn't have a style or a voice. In other words, the effort doesn't go into defining a particular persona, a speaking voice, or into developing a certain repertoire of stylistic devices that, taken as a whole, create an identifiable poetic style. Most poets, even on the avant-garde side of things, where Ullán definitely was located, do put most of their effort into style and voice. This is probably why, if you asked me to define Ullán's legacy, I would first draw a blank.

Prieto de Paula defines it like this in today's País: "El hilo conductor de su obra es el proceso, la búsqueda. Cuando encontraba lo que buscaba, rompía con ello. De ahí que no tenga un título que podamos considerar emblemático. Su propio discurso repudiaba eso." Miguel Casado points out that there could be no school of Ullán. There is nothing to be imitated.

This may be why I've never written about him. It's harder for the critic, too, to get a handle on a figure like this. Just to say he did visual poetry is one crude way of locating him, though not all his poetry falls in this category.

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