POETRY REPEATS ITELF - ANNE CARSON AND GUILLERMO DE TORRE

Reading some poetry by the brand-new Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Anne Carson, I was reminded of Guillermo de Torre, the Spanish ultraist poet, and of how Julio Casares took him to task in an article titled «Hélices, por Guillermo de Torre». Casares discusses ultraist poetry with considerable humor and a good deal of sarcasm.

The article dates from 1920, 106 years before Carson won the Nobel Prize. Yet the two poets have something in common that is worth pointing out. Casares quotes a poem by de Torre entitled «Fotogenia»:

Rostros,

Muecas,

Visajes

Acordes faciales

de la emoción iluminada

Gestos dardeantes...

Now consider these lines by Anne Carson:

It's good to be neuter.

I want to have meaningless legs.

There are things unbearable.

.................................................

It is curious how poetry repeats itself. A century separates these two writers, yet both seem to challenge our expectations of what a poem should say, and how it should say it.

One was ridiculed by a critic; the other has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Have our standards of poetry changed so much, or have we simply learned to admire what once made us laugh?