AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO - José María Álvarez

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AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO. JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ
When he calls on Villon, Fats Waller, Lester Young and Billie
Holiday at. the end of « Private Papers», he uses them as a
last refuge from the world, a final source of sensual, satisfaction
before death.
Though Alvarez’s landscape is one familiar to the American
audience, it seems somewhat more modern than contemporary
in many ways. That is, Alvarez’s world-view more nearly
resembles American poetry (and Spanish poetry, I believe)
earlier in the century than the poetry being written today.
Contemporary American poets, it seems to me, are less
concerned with the Waste Land, more with their own
consciousness; less obsessed by the erosion of culture than by
the disintegration of personal relationships; less inclined to see
Art as a refuge from Life.
Yet in another way, Alvarez’s poems bear a strong relationship
to contemporary American poetry. His use of imagery is akin
to that of certain Americans of this generation, for it depends
heavily on the use of rapid association.
The American poet Robert Bly speaks of the concept of
«leaping» in poetry, and credits the Spanish with the greatest
ability to use leaping or rapid association as a form of content
(LEAPING POETRY: AND IDEA WITH POEMS AND
TRANSLATIONS CHOSEN BY ROBERT BLY. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1972). While some American poets have
considered association to be a form of content rather than a
mere «device», or «technique» (Wallace Stevens, Kenneth
Patchen), Bly says «... the Spanish poets... –much greater than
the French in my opinion– loved the newppaths of association
even more than the French. They considered them roads».
Antonio Machado says:
Why should we call
these accidental furrows roads?...
Everyone who moves on walks
Like Jesus, on, the sea.
Alvarez, I believe, fits into Bly’s category of poets who know
how to leap. In «Goma de alcohol (Nictalope)», for example,
there are the rapid associations from party leftovers to a beach
to a thick dream; then from the pale sea of dawn to the cold
body of a girl. In «Amor constante más allá de la muerte» he