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The aim of this paper is to reveal and explain the way writers use the analogy between writing and giving birth in some metapoetic texts of lyrical poetry. Despite its classical roots, we mostly pay attention to the contemporary use of this metaphor. The paper considers the genre implications, takes a slight glance at feminist debate on the matter and notes the great importance of this analogy in the poetic theory and the works of female poets such as Ángela Figuera Aymerich and Ana María Fagundo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics have long drawn attention to the moralizing tenor of Fray Luis’s opening ode, as well as to its profound links with Horace, and in particular his secondEpode. These approaches, however, have not often been combined. This paper seeks to show that understanding the nature of the poem’s link to Horace is in fact key to revealing its moral content, by providing a reconsideration of the evidence that ties Fray Luis’s poem toEpode2, before arguing that the crux of the Spaniard’s interaction with his Roman forebear lies rather in hitherto-unremarked Horatian parallels for the central images of the garden and the sea, whose interaction underpins the development of the Spanish ode. This study therefore offers a new reading of Fray Luis’s most famous poem, while also throwing important light on his practice of poetic imitation, and in particular his much-cited relationship with Horace, thus providing support for the recent scholarly trend to view Horace as a thematic source for his Spanish successor, as well as a stylistic model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fleetingness of time and the anguish it provokes is one of the most recurrent topics in modern literature. The romantic attitude of the poet tortured by thinking of the brevity of life is often adopted by Lorca, who in his writings proposes two ways of 'remaining', that is, not being forgotten by not dying: 1: having descendants, an option about which the poet will express a certain frustration in the poems; 2: simply writing and being remembered in every reading of his works. In this paper I will try to show how Lorca attempts a third way in the Suites (1920-21) by trying to insert himself into a mythical tradition which, according to Ricoeur (1974: 426), is an eternal discourse, updated throughout history and becoming an archetype into which people's experiences can be fitted, by including mythical references in his poems, which reflect the experiences and wishes of the poetic voice. Moreover, the mythical tradition that Lorca chooses to connect with is that of the deities who are able to be fertile without sexual interaction. In this light the Suites become one of the first attempts made by Lorca to become 'eternal', due to their form of intellectualized Poetry, which asserts their validity independently of when or by whom they are being read, and the references to myths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay explores: vision and visuality in Pablo Neruda's poetry; the effects on the texts and their reception of the many visual illustrations which have been published and, briefly, the role of photographic and filmic representations of Neruda in constructing perceptions of him as a writer. The texts reveal that while privileging sight, Neruda reveals himself to have less than perfect vision; the visual images sometimes eclipse the poetry interestingly, and sometimes they make it more clear than it really is. The 'Oda al ojo', from the Nuevas odas elementales is used as a guide to Neruda's possible problem with seeing things straight; contextual, paratextual and metatextual images are referred to in order to suggest that a clearer perspective on one of Neruda's key preoccupations -- witness -- is available from an examination of text-image dynamics than it is from an examination of, or from the production of, the words on the page. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]