The Baker-Nord Center for Humanities will host a faculty work-in-progress talk by Cristian Gomez Olivares, associate professor of Spanish, Wednesday, April 3, from noon to 1 p.m. in Clark Hall, Room 206. Gomez Olivares will present a talk titled “Uses and Abuses of Mexican Poetry: Why Ángel Ortuño is (not) an Anomaly in Mexico.”
In his talk, Gomez Olivares will trace the main trends in Ángel Ortuño’s poetry, as the inheritor of traditions that wanted to challenge the Mexican canon, and as the scathing critic of contemporary life.
At the same time playful and sour, Ortuño’s oeuvre shows a renewed faith in the short poem as a literary artifact, amidst a history of national poetry that has privileged the pantheon of long, philosophical poems, such as “Primero sueño,” “Muerte sin fin,” “Pieda de sol e Incurable.”
Gomez Olivares will try to answer why in the middle of the chaotic Mexican life in the 21st century, a poet chooses irony and sarcasm as his main strategies of representation.