[Sherno examines the individual design of Fuertes ' poetry, in which the key element of solitude, grounded in individual, personal experiences, is presented for the reader to perceive and participate in with the author.]

From the outset of her literary career, Gloria Fuertes has distinguished herself as a poet resistant to categorization.¹ Born in 1918, Fuertes is approximately contemporaneous with Gabriel Celaya, José Hierro, Blas de Otero, and José Luis Hidalgo, poets who rose to prominence after 1944, the year of Dámaso Alonso's Hijos de la ira. Fuertes shares with those poets the mark of that pivotal work, apparent in expressions of an anguish both personal and communal, in the rejection of an elitist esthetic in favor of accents decidedly colloquial, conversational, prosaic, even grotesque. Still, by virtue of her very personal vision of the world and by her equally idiosyncratic way of conveying that vision, Gloria Fuertes diverges from her chronological contemporaries and has been linked to younger poets like Claudio Rodríguez, Ángel González, Francisco Brines and others who comprise what has been called the "generation of 1956-1971."²

Fuertes is the first to recognize her own eclecticism and uniqueness: "Fui surrealista, sin haber leído a ningún surrealista; después, aposta, 'postista'—la única mujer que pertenecía al efímero grupo de Carlos Edmundo de Ory, Chicharro y Sernesi."³ She has called herself "antipoeta," and while the repetition in her work of mundane preoccupations, of vulgarities, and of an antirhetorical stance is on occasion reminiscent of antipoetry, her generous spirit is not given to ridicule and lacks the fundamental nihilism of antipoetry.⁴ Further, whereas antipoetry represents the dissolution of the traditional lyric voice, "que de una caracterización definida y personal pasa al anonimato, la imprecisión y la ambigüedad,"⁵ it is clear just from the innumerable "autobiografías" which figure so often in the body of her work and from the frequency with which she playfully injects her own name into her verses that her voice is far from anonymous, imprecise, or ambiguous.

In a poem written at the precocious age of seventeen and which later came to lend its title to her first published work, Isla ignorada (1950), Fuertes declared her identification with that island, "en el centra de un mar / que no me entiende, / rodeada de nada, /—sola sólo" (OI, 21). These early words prefigure the poet's reiterated theme of solitude and her insistence on self-definition. Fuertes is aware of what is perhaps the most salient feature of her poetry: "Reconozco que soy muy 'yoísta,'" she has allowed, "que soy muy 'glorista'" (OI, 22). In spite of her sincere and continuous social concerns, almost all of her poetry is self-referential since, in her view, "Lo que a mí me sucedió, sucederá, es lo que ha sucedido al pueblo, es lo que ha ocurrido a todos" (OI, 22). The persistent presence of her original and unique poetic voice is the unifying thread that runs through all of her work, and the imposition of her voice is, in fact, the manner in which she seeks to confront the solitude which lies at the core of even her earliest verses. It is the very reassertion and recreation of herself as a figure "rodeada de nada" that constitutes her poetry's most constant theme.

Through her verses Gloria Fuertes arrives at a kind of poetics of her own individualistic design: the title "Poética" occurs almost as frequently as does "Autobío." She knows precisely what poetry should do and be: it must thrill, disconcert, and amuse, be a warning against injustices and "una aspirina inmensa" to relieve pain. Poetry must, above all, "poblarnos la soledad." The poet assumes roles to invite our participation in this enterprise. She becomes variously a temptress to lure us, a clown to make us laugh (and cry), a terrorist to coerce us. Whatever the mask, Fuertes' supreme purpose is to confront la nada by the vehicle of her poetry. For this purpose she opens her ample embrace to include her readers as active participants in her poetry, thus joining with them to inhabit, communally, the void.

The solitude which Fuertes so poignantly depicts derives from the failure of personal love, the rejection by others of her affection, and her own inability to return love once proffered. It also springs from the poet's very real sense of herself as an anomalous figure who leads "una vida extraña," a, "fabuloso desastre," a "tierna amazona," an outlandish creature isolated from others by nature and by design:

Vivo sola, cabra sola
—que no quise cabrito en compañía—,
cuando subo a lo alto de este valle,
siempre encuentro un lirio de alegría.
Y vivo por mi cuenta, cabra sola;
que yo a ningún rebaño pertenezco.
Si sufrir es estar como una cabra,
entonces sí lo estoy, no dudar de ello.
(OI, 212)

Much as she views herself, Gloria Fuertes envisions solitude as a bizarre personage upon whom she confers some of the aura of a character in an allegory. Intriguingly evocative of the Arcipreste de Hita's Trotaconventos, this personified Solitude challenges conventional ideas of morality, respectability, even femininity, just as the poet herself demands that the reader likewise weigh preconceived notions about what is the proper scope of poetry:⁶

La Soledad que yo tengo
es una mujer fatal,
buena—como buena puta—
me lo dice y va y se va.

Like a gypsy, this phantasmagorical belle dame sans merci is not devoid of her own crafty charms which invite the poet to join in her soleá, her dance of melancholy and of hope:

Fuertes' solitude coincides as well with an acutely-felt sense of nothingness which assumes such various shapes in her work as the spaces representing missed connections between the poet and those around her, the hollow which she equates with death and with God. It is an oblivion, alternately longed for and dreaded, "en el fondo del fondo de la botella" (OI, 312). It is the emptiness of a gnawing spiritual hunger: the poet declares herself "asténica y anoréxica," conditions infinitely less tolerable to her than "estar en la India, / pasando un hambre distinta" (OI, 302). Fuertes imagines her loneliness as "la tristeza del átomo solo / sin su molécula" (OI, 355) and as the stab of pain to the heart—"no le claves ya más alfileres," she pleads—which is very like the minute but no less intense wound which a pin inflicts upon entering a pincushion. She feels herself open, like "un ojal inmenso, / que no encuentra botón / donde abrocharse para siempre" (HG, 198). The images, whether that of an empty refrigerator, a buttonhole, or a pincushion, are concrete and homely, even banal. They are therefore easily accessible to the reader, who might expect, and indeed first experience, a momentary comfort upon meeting such everyday objects. Yet their very plainness and accessibility make more identifiable and in this way less avoidable, the association with the emotional and spiritual void which the poet intends. The ultimate effect is unexpected and disconcerting: the poet, herself like "una mujer fatal," does what "la zorra Soledad" does to her, luring us, her unwitting but not unwilling readers, into the void, and thus accompanied, she equips herself and us to confront it.

In this poem which is an extended and complex play on words, Fuertes likens her solitary state to that of a choking singer or a drowning swimmer:

Es mejor no tener nada que Nada.

¡Nada que te ahogas cacho cabrón!

¡Respira y canta que sigue el orfeón,
te pagan por cantar!
Y a nadie importa nadie
y menos tu naufragio …

¡Nada!

Todos los santos tienen octava
y Beethoven novena.
(OI, 307)

The poem evokes the helplessness of a lone swimmer immersed in the silent world of surrounding waters; of a singer deafened, perhaps like Beethoven, amid the muffled sounds of a chorus. The entire piece is an excellent example of what Andrew Debicki calls "reversal of expectations" resulting from the interrelationship or superimposition of various, often disparate texts.⁷ Beginning with the title, repeated in the first line of the poem, Fuertes cues the reader (or at least appears to do so) that the poem will deal with two not notably contradictory but still somewhat divergent concepts: "no tener nada," a reference to lack of possessions, and "Nada," nothingness, the void, suitably capitalized to suggest the more transcendental state of spiritual isolation. The poet opines that material poverty is preferable to the abstraction of a more overwhelming and all-encompassing nothingness. This observation might at first seem in danger of collapsing from lack of inspiration, or under the weight of its own unoriginality.⁸ But the reader is forced to attention by the following exclamation: "¡Nada que te ahogas cacho cabrón!" Fuertes now introduces a third meaning to the word "nada," this time alluding to the verb "nadar," and in so doing deliberately upsets the reader's expectations of further philosophical musings, hurling at him instead not only insulting vulgarities but the bewildering command to swim because he is drowning. The implicit humor of the word play collides with the sobriety of tone already established, and disorients the reader, just as a drowning swimmer is disoriented.⁹

Having set up this disturbing interplay of meanings, the poet heartlessly proceeds to confound her reader still further with a second command: "¡Respira y canta que sigue el orfeón, / te pagan por cantar!" The notion of breathing would seem a logical extension of the act of swimming, but the order to sing is indeed a new twist and the cause of further befuddlement. By the time he arrives at the final exclamation, "¡Nada!", the reader, unlikely to know which of the meanings to attach to the word, is now quite literally at sea.

Nevertheless, the closing lines of the poem provide a clue. By reversing the logical associations of a musical term, "octava," with Beethoven, and of a religious term, "novena," with the saints, the final words point out the chasm that lies between extraordinary souls who have achieved exalted status, and the poet, an ordinary being who possesses nothing and matters to no one. To understand the relationship between these closing words (an apparently flippant and disconnected comment about Beethoven and the saints) and the rest of the poem, we are obliged to retrace our steps. By rereading, we can hear once again the voice of the poet calling attention by devious means to what is her fundamental concern: the threat of nothingness. The final verses, it becomes clear, are an anxious comment by a poet (not, after all, wholly unlike a singer) who fears being lost to oblivion, not to material poverty or to capricious rejection by those who "pagan por cantar" and who in any case are indifferent to her fate. "Nada" is a command directed towards herself, a mandate for the poet to write poetry and thereby to save herself from drowning in a sea of nothingness. The end of the poem thus underscores the maze-like confusion of codes which characterizes both the literal meaning of the poem and the underlying message which must be read between the lines.¹⁰ Fuertes stops us at every turn, and deliberately causes us to lose our bearings. Subtly, uncannily, even subversively,—she forces us to experience what she herself most fears—the encroaching blackness of solitude and the silence of the void.

This silence best expresses the nothingness against which Fuertes' poetic voice struggles to be heard. Indeed, all of her poetry might accurately be described as a counterpoint of silence and sound, or as an alternation between the presence and absence of voice. The poet perceives her verses as growing out of silence: "Al calor del silencio se maduran mis versos" (OI, 308), she announces in a poem composed of this single statement. Fuertes, of course, writes many such "poems" which consist of one or two verses, usually pithy observations on the human condition, or flashes of insight and discovery, as in this instance of self-revelation: "El poeta al sentir / descubre todo lo que no le han enseñado" (OI, 300). Many of these short poems are similarly aphoristic in nature, reminiscent of Moratín or of the eighteenth-century fabulists, or resemble Japanese haiku, in which poetic expression is very much compressed to demonstrate a similar interplay of silence and sound, and to oblige as well the reader's involvement in the act of poetic creation.¹¹ Fuertes' affinity for these short poetic forms is evident from her earliest work, when in Isla ignorada she designated them "Momentos." Poeta de guardia (1968), the collection that assured her serious critical regard,¹² includes an entire section of verses called "Mini-poemas," although these are significantly longer than the epigrammatic verses which comprise much of Sola en la sala (1973) and Historia de Gloria (1980).¹³ Many are in fact mere repetitions of the titles, as if to indicate the conscious suppression of the poetic process, or to suggest that the instantaneous bolt of inspiration, emotion, or awareness is alone emblematic of that process. José Luis Cano observes that Fuertes

suele huir tanto de la retórica como del
subjectivismo divagatorio. Su técnica es
la vieja técnica popular de ir al grano,
de contar en pocas palabras lo que pasa
en el mundo y lo que les pasa a sus amigos
—reaies o fantasmas—y a ella misma.¹⁴

In one of her many "Poéticas," Fuertes questions the need for an excess of words, "si ya está todo dicho" (OI, 190), and even more directly she affirms:

Hay que decir lo que hay que decir pronto,
de pronto,
visceral
del tronco;
con las menos palabras posibles
que sean posibles los imposibles.
(HG, 120)

Gloria Fuertes uses "the least words possible" to approximate the silence which for her is another name for la nada. Significantly, many of these one- or two-line verses do not conform to conventional definitions of poetic expression: more than once the poet herself intimates that her verses are not, in fact, poetry. When Fuertes writes, for example, "Estoy mejor que ayer, / hoy lloré menos" (HG, 76), or when she observes that "El pobre no tiene la culpa de ser pobre, el rico, sí" (HG, 90), she has pruned the lines of rhetoric and distilled the message to such a point that it seems utterly lacking in depth, mystery, or in any meaning beyond the surface. To look beneath this surface is to discover the vast emptiness, the nothingness, which is for Gloria Fuertes the inescapable fact of human existence.

To the extent that Fuertes effectively absorbs the silence of la nada into these very brief poems, and to the extent that she finds recourse as well in presumably extrapoetic forms, she oversteps the bounds of the conventional and flirts with antipoetry. But unlike the antipoet, she does not parody traditional poetry in an effort to destroy what the antipoet deems artificial and hermetic.¹⁵ Hers is not a destructive art; rather, Fuertes attempts to erect in her poetry bridges of communication. To that end, she selects forms that are odd, most certainly, but also endearing, clearly designed to narrow the gaps in communication and to extend herself to her fellow man. She writes, for example, letters, both to herself and others; telegrams, radio messages, commercial announcements, recipes, menus, even reprimands. The sound of the telephone is important to Fuertes: "el teléfono que no cesa," she describes it by way of gentle tribute to Miguel Hernández' El rayo que no cesa. So too are doorbells and stairways, signs of connection which she perceives as means of breaking through the isolation and the silence.

Those extrapoetic verses, marked by brevity of mode and urgency of message, are destined to communicate over the silence. The one- and two-line poems, characterized by a lack of artifice and a virtual suppression of message, are meant to echo the silence of the void. Balanced against these minimalist verses of self-imposed authorial restraint is another whole body of poems—longer, verbose, often repetitious and enumerative—in which the poetic voice serves not to imitate but to counter and fill the void. These longer poems take the form, for example, of litanies, as in "Letanía de los montes de la vida," a poetic transcription of the Beatitudes. Here the poet casts a typically benign and humorous glance at humanity in high and low stations, including poets and thieves, virgins and cynics. In a far different vein is "A la muerte," a veritable catalogue of insults aimed at the arch-foe death, in the same vituperative spirit that the Arcipreste de Talavera directed against women.¹⁶ Among these longer verses figures also a group of poems dedicated simply to the repetition of sounds, from which the following brief selections will serve as examples:

Todo tiene eñe en España,
¡hasta España!

Eñe el coño o la cigüeña que nos trae,
eñe la cizaña o la guadaña que nos lleva,
eñe la niña que nos enfría, …
o eñe de niño, que somos todos,
los que aún latimos con un poema.
(HG, 115)

Fea, fascista y fulana,
formidable era de cuerpo
(frío me dejó en el alma);
flato, flojera y más efes
tenía por la mañana
(HG, 124)

De este molesto caparazón
la ñnica salida de mi prisión
cuando me encierra tu despreocupación,
es el escape de mi inspiración,
es la escalera de mi creación,
es hacer poesia con lo que vomita mi corazón.
(HG, 125)

To be sure, these protracted verses, at first glance absurd and incoherent, diverge sharply from more conventional definitions of poetry. But the oddly naive repetitions, which the reader might at first dismiss as the failed efforts of an unschooled artist, contain their own veiled meaning. If we listen carefully to the sounds of the hammering alliterations, we hear the letterwriter sending her urgent, passionate message; the rejected lover, desperately finding excuses to reject in turn; the child conjuring up visions of birth, death, Spain. We hear at last the poet, whose poetry provides her the only escape from the prison of her own solitude. When later, in the epigraph to "Lo, lo lógico," Fuertes says "hasta tartamudeo por lo que voy a decir" (HG, 183), it becomes clear that the significance of these "poems" resides in the transmitting, however faltering, of sound waves across the silence, and that that sound is the voice of the poet.

The distinctive sound of Fuertes' voice is finally what we come to identify unquestionably with the conception she has of her own poetry. The inherent kindliness of her voice is conveyed most transparently in her portrayal of the street hawker in "Puesto del Rastro":

—Hornillos eléctricos brocados bombillas
discos de Beethoven sifones de selt
tengo lamparitas de todos los precios,
ropa usada vendo en buen uso ropa
trajes de torero objetos de nácar,
miniaturas pieles libros y abanicos.
Braseros, navajas, morteros, pinturas.
Pienso para pájaros, huevos de avestruz.
Incunables tengo gusanos de seda
hay cunas de niño y gafas de sol.
Esta bicicleta aunque está oxidada es de buena marca.
Muchas tijeritas, cintas bastidor.
Entren a la tienda vean los armarios,
tresillos visillos mudas interiores,
hay camas cameras casi sin usar.
Artesas de pino forradas de estaño.
Güitos en conserva,
óleos de un discípulo que fue de Madrazo.
Corbatas muletas botas de montar.
Maniquies tazones cables y tachuelas.
Zapatos en buen uso, santitos a elegir,
tengo santas Teresas, San Cosmes y un San Bruno,
palanganas alfombras relojes de pared.
Pitilleras gramófonos azulejos y estufas.
Monos amaestrados, puntillas y quinqués.
Y vean la sección de libros y novelas,
la revista francesa con tomos de Verlaine,
con figuras posturas y paisajes humanos.
Cervantes Calderón el Oscar y Papini
son muy buenos autores a dur a nada más.
Estatuas de Cupido en todos los tamaños
y este velazqueño tapiz de salón,

vea qué espejito, mantas casi nuevas,
sellos importantes, joyas …
(OI, 66-67)

The poet-vendor exalts her merchandise, objects of dubious value commonly disdained by those of higher social status. She is properly proud of her wares—the ostrich eggs, the almost-new beds, the figurines and rusted bicycles—is genuinely fond of their modest virtues, as she is fond of those who would buy them. She invests these objects with their own poignant dignity despite, or because of, their value to souls of less refined sensibilities and tastes. Moreover, Fuertes expands her readers' sights to adjust to her own generous notions regarding the proper domain of poetry. She is less interested in the finely-turned phrase—"no me tientes a retóricos sonetos"—than in poetry which she recognizes "en las cosas pequeñas." For her, it is perfectly suitable for poetry to be banal, eccentric, vulgar to the point of kitsch. Included among her titles, after all, are "Camp," "Minicursi," "Almas de Duralex," and "Virgen de plástico," and it is true that like "the connoisseur of Camp," Gloria Fuertes manifestly delights in the "commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses."¹⁷

Beyond the enumeration of objects, among which poetry must be counted as yet another commodity, what we most remember from "Puesto del Rastro" is the pervasive voice of Gloria Fuertes.¹⁸ The voice that carries through all of her poetry is many-faceted. For example, she characterizes herself with Franciscan humility as an all-seeing eye:¹⁹

Porque yo, tan mínima, sé tantas cosas,
y mi cuerpo es un ojo sin fin
con el que para mi desventura veo todo.
(OI, 76)

She is ever vigilant, waiting in silent expectation, a "poeta de guardia," "sola en la sala." That is why we see her, again and again, in a characteristically contemplative pose, "esperando el coche de línea," "sentada en una silla dibujando," "yo misma sobre las baldosas," "aquí estoy, clavada a la silla." Poetry and life are for her the same private experience, a silent and mysterious process by which she arrives at a state of inner awareness.

In "Prologuillo" (HG, 57), the initial poem of Fuertes' most recent collection, Historia de Gloria, the diminutive of the title reflects the simplicity and unpretentiousness of its author. Yet these qualities are not without a concomitant sureness of self. Even as she questions the nature of her efforts—"Los poemas (¿,son poemas?)"—she is quick to assure us that the book we are beginning has been written with the utmost sincerity and love. Paraphrasing Walt Whitman, she avers, "Esto no es un libro, es una mujer."²⁰ This declaration unlocks a series of interconnected texts or realities. It recalls Whitman's literal use of the word "man" in the original quotation to mean himself specifically, as well as the openheartedness with which he extended the word to all of humanity. Fuertes amplifies our understanding of humanity by insisting on her own womanhood as representative of humankind's feminine component. Her vision embraces all of these meanings since her book, she tells us, is not a book, but rather the fullest expression of its author's personal integrity.

That integrity is manifold and complex. Juxtaposed against the picture of a silent, solitary figure is a converse image: not Gloria Fuertes, humble and self-effacing, but Gloria Fuertes, bold, even larger-than-life; not the meditative, seated spectator but the aggressive participant. Here is the poet in "Autoprólogo," presenting herself to the readers of Historia de Gloria:

Un barco atraca en un puerto.
Un terrorista atraca en un Banco.
Yo os atraco con una ternura de cañones recortados
para que me entreguéis vuestra atención.
—Esto es un atraco,
¡Manos unidas!
A punto de poema vengo a asaltar
corazones cerrados,
a robaros la indiferencia.
Si al salir por esta puerta (libro)
os dejo "tocados,"
Perdón (serán rasguños de amor sin importancia).
(HG, 57)

Once again, the poet intermingles strikingly different texts, disparate levels of reality which turn on the various senses of the verb "atracar." The poem begins with the relatively peaceful image of a ship pulling into harbor, an image which does nothing to dislodge our anticipation at beginning the book. But the serenity of the scene is instantly disrupted by the intrusion of a terrorist robbing a bank. The unexpectedness of this new image provides exactly the jolt that Fuertes wishes us to experience. The lines are meant to shock us out of our indifference, and to dispel any prior thoughts we may have about the tranquil and dignified nature of poetry. The poet takes on the role not of the gentle guide and companion, but of the terrorist who commandeers her unsuspecting readers' attention. Fuertes will not be eluded, even if it means assaulting us "con una ternura de cañones recortados." Even so, poetry is a tender subversion. "¡Manos unidas!," Fuertes exclaims, slyly compelling us to accept the comradeship which is one of the aims of her poetry. We are forced to see poetry not as mere passive introspection, but as a confrontation and an attack on closed minds and hearts. It will not leave us unscathed, even though the poet reverts, at the close of the poem, to her more recognizable attitude of humility by begging her hostages' forgiveness for wounds inflicted in the name of love.

Central too to our grasp of the poem is the unavoidable realization that the enforced, though tender, relationship established between poet and readers implies that poetry is not just a solitary activity but a public one as well. When Fuertes portrays herself "sola en la sala," she absorbs and internalizes her solitude. By confronting us now, "a punto de poema," she obliges us to join with her in externalizing the inner drama of solitude.

The curious and paradoxical commingling of inner awareness and outer experience summarizes Fuertes' conception of her poetry and the sense of nothingness which informs it. "Aquí estoy iexpuesta como todos," she says later, confirming her isolation but recognizing it as a communal experience. Gloria Fuertes is willing to expose herself, much as an actor does on the stage. In fact, when she says of existence, "Esto, es Teatro," she makes of it a public spectacle raised to the level of ritual and therefore possessed of an aura of timelessness. She perceives life as "la gran Función," an immense game of risk whose stakes are mystery and silence. Rather than succumbing to the impossibility of la nada, she openly and publicly embraces the impossible and, in the titles of her poetry, she would have us do the same: she advises us to "beber hilo," like madmen; to fear "ni tiro, ni veneno, ni navaja"; she tells us how to "atar los bigotes al tigre." To accomplish these harrowing feats—to defy, in short, the impossible—the poet assumes a series of guises which instill her with daring. She calls herself "atleta-poeta," appearing now as a boxer, now a surfer. She is often a bullfighter—since in that capacity she is most like God, "Torero nuestro de cada día," staving off the void which is God's inverse form. She clothes herself as an astronaut, surrounded by a crushing infinity, and as a dancer of tangos, that very dramatic, even ritualized dance of seduction. Not surprisingly, among the faces Gloria Fuertes presents are those of the circus clown, whose "místico … es reír." This incarnation is peculiarly suited to her, since it blends the qualities of humor and pathos which so often co-exist in her work. In another metamorphosis Fuertes is a magician who finds doves under her petticoat, and makes poetry appear or disappear. She transforms herself into a mime, gesticulating at the silence, and into a wild animal trainer, whose purpose is to "domesticar al destino. / Amaestrar el deseo" (HG, 247). She becomes a tightrope artist, "crucificado en el aire," suspended over the vast hollow below.

The tango, the bullring, the circus, infinite space: the poet enters realms of confrontation which nonetheless house a center of stillness and mystery. By means of her various roles, she becomes a monumentalized figure and her voice a hyperbolic "ay atroz" resounding in the silence. Through her poetry, Fuertes achieves a singular luminescence of character which is itself a kind of apotheosis:

Gloria Fuertes is ever willing to dare the impossible—to become everything—to fill la nada. This is, finally, the way she envisions her poetry: as a perpetual unfolding of herself and a continual challenge—a laughing defiance, a taming, a seduction—of solitude.

NOTES

¹ Among the works consulted for the present study are the following: Andrew P. Debicki, Poetry of Discovery: The Spanish Generation of 1956-1971 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982); Pablo González Roads, "Introducción," in Gloria Fuertes' Histoha de Gloria (Madrid: Cátedra, 1980); Francisco Ynduráin, "Prólogo," in Gloria Fuertes' Antología poética 1950-1969 (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1970).

² Debicki (p. 18) ties Gloria Fuertes to this generation for the "intertextuality and the way of conveying meaning" exemplified by her poetry.

³ Gloria Fuertes, Obras incompletas (Madrid: Cátedra, 1977), p. 22. I have used this text and also Historia de Gloria (Madrid: Cátedra, 1980). The former collection is a compilation of Isla ignorada (Madrid: Musa Nueva, 1950); Aconsejo beber hilo (Madrid: Arquero, 1954); Todo asusta (Caracas: Lírica Hispana, 1958); Ni tiro, ni veneno, ni navaja (Barcelona: El Bardo, 1955); Poeta de guardia (Barcelona. El Bardo, 1968); Cómo atar los bigotes al tigre (Barcelona: El Bardo, 1969); and Sola en la sala (Zaragoza: Javalambre, 1973). Subsequent parenthetical references are to Obras incompletas (Of) or Historia de Gloria (HG).

Pablo González Rodas cites Félix Grande's definition of postismo as "un movimiento estético cuya audacia y frescura expresivas significaron, aparté de la aventura de lenguaje más joven y rigurosa, el único vínculo profundo con el surréalisme) desde nuestro país" ("Introduccion" to Historia de Gloria, p. 30).

⁴ See Paul W. Borgeson, Jr., "Lenguaje hablado / lenguaje poético: Parra, Cardenal y la antipoesía," Revista iberoamericana (Jan.-June 1982) 48 (118-119), pp. 383-89; and Iván M. Carrasco, "La antipoesía: escritura de la impotencia expresiva," Estudios filológicos 17 (1982), pp. 67-76.

⁵ Carrasco, p. 76.

⁶ Margaret H. Persin has made illuminating comments about this poem, "Sola con Esperanza," in "Humor as Semiosis in the Poetry of Gloria Fuertes," Recent Spanish Poetry and the Role of the Reader (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1987). See especially pp. 128-29.

⁷ Debicki, in Poetry of Discovery, dedicates a chapter to Fuertes entitled "Intertexuality and Reversal of Expectations."

On the complex problem of intertextuality, see Julia Kristeva, Semiotikè: Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1969); Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978); Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982).

Regarding the concept of "superposiciones," the reader should consult Carlos Bousoño, Teoría de la expresión poética, 5th ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), pp. 303-36.

⁸ Nancy Mandlove discusses the recycling of cliches in "Used Poetry: The Trans-parent Language of Gloria Fuertes and Ángel González," Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Vol. vii, No. 2 (invierno 1983), pp. 301-06.

⁹ On the subject of humor in Gloria Fuertes, see José Luis Cano, "Humor y ternura en la poesía de Gloria Fuertes," Poesía española contemporánea: Las generaciones de posguerra (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1974), pp. 174-80; and Timothy J. Rogers, "The Comic Spirit in the Poetry of Gloria Fuertes," Perspectives on Contemporary Literature, Vol. 7 (1981), pp. 88-97. See too Margaret H. Persin's "Humor as Semiosis in the Poetry of Gloria Fuertes."

¹⁰ Mandlove (p. 301) uses the term "trans-parent language" to refer to "those poems in which the reader must see through the apparent message, must read between the lines to perceive the silence, la nada, behind the poem."

¹¹ Joaquin González Muela associates Fuertes with the tradition of Moratín, the eighteenth-century fabulistas, and the sainete of Ramon de la Cruz. "Gloria Fuertes, 'poeta de guardia,'" in La nueva poesía española (Madrid: Alcalá, 1973), pp. 13-29.

¹² See González Muela in the work cited.

¹³ Gloria Fuertes states in her prologue to Obras incompletas (p. 31): "Cuando escribí Sola en la sala yo estaba por primera vez enferma, tenía mucha prisa, y decía lo que ténia que decir con la rapidez de un dardo, un navajazo, una caricia." In her own prologue to Obras incompletas, p. 31.

¹⁴ Cano, "Humor y ternura …," p. 176.

¹⁵ See Borgeson, pp. 385-86 and Carrasco, p. 69.

¹⁶ Rubén Benítez links this poem to the medieval "danza de la muerte" as well as "los versos de escarnio y de maldecir" ("El maravilloso retablo popular de Gloria Fuertes," Mester, Vol. 9 [enero 1980], pp. 29-30).

¹⁷ Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp,'" in A Susan Sontag Reader (New York: Vintage, 1983), p. 116.

¹⁸ Debtcki (p. 83) discusses a similar poem, "El vendedor de papeles oel poeta sin suerte," in the light of opposing texts which break down the barriers between poetry and everyday life.

¹⁹ Benítez, p. 25.

²⁰ The original words of Walt Whitman are as follows: "Camerado this is no book, / Who touches this touches a man." "So long!" in Leaves of Grass, ed. Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett (New York: Norton, 1973), pp. 503-06, 1.53-54.