kitsch

 I published two articles in Hispanic Review in the 1990s.  The first was "The Twilight of the Avant-Garde: Spanish Poetry of the 1980s" (1992) which then became the last part of the last chapter of my second book. I used the title The Twilight of the Avant-Garde as the title of my third book, as well.  The article begins like this:  

"Perhaps the single most significant development in Spanish poetry of the most recent decade is a waning of the avant-garde impulse that has animated modern poetry from the early years of the twentieth century. One anthologist characterizes the poetry of the 1980s as '"una poesia 'moderna'" que por primera vez en este siglo, no se identifica con vanguardia" (Barella 14)." 

I used Umberto Eco's definition of kitsch in order to explain the rejection of the avant-garde. The second, in 1999, was "The Avant-Garde and its Discontents: Aesthetic Conservativism in Recent Spanish Poetry."  This became the first chapter in the 3rd book, The Twilight of the Avant-Garde. For a while, before my Lorquian phase, I was mainly known as the American Hispanist who was taking the side of Spanish poets who were against the "poetry of experience." 

It turns out I was on to something, but the kitsch aesthetic did not really flourish until the emergence of Elvira Castro, who was born the year I published the first article. And other poets of that generation, like Fernando Valverde. 

Now, I want to write an "I was right" article.  I posed about it on facebook.  These younger poets are sponsored by LGM and Benjamín Prado, and are cast in the role of "rock stars." I looked at Sastre's instagram, and it had a post in which she brags about Joaquín Sabina and Almudena Grandes calling her an "estrella de rock." What could be kitschier than Elvira Sastre, who is the official translator for Rupi Kaur?  

The problem is that it cannot be an anonymous article. I have to explain it in terms of what how my own thoughts developed over a thirty year period. You can't do a palinode anonymously.