In the Name of the Father and the Mother: Mourning, Memory and Imagination in the Poetry of José Kozer, Tamara Kamenszain, and Eduardo Espina
Abstract
While often taken as sentimental in nature, poetry about death provides poets and readers an artistic space for processing grief. The Latin American Neobaroque, a way of writing poetry know predominantly for its intellectual approach to language, has to date provided no understanding of an emotional component as a feature of its creative conception. The manner in which the formally recognized Neobaroque poets, José Kozer, Tamara Kamenszain, and Eduardo Espina avoid sentimentality in new poems written on the deaths of their parents is a question on which preliminary research shows little to no exchange of ideas. For this reason, it is suggested that these three poets create a caesura within the understanding of the discourse on the Neobaroque. In so doing, this investigation becomes essential as the first serious line of inquiry with significant intellectual value on this subject, and is advanced through the creation of a framework for anti-sentimentality in the Neobaroque. As a result of this investigation, it is ascertained that the concept of poetic areté provides a much-needed response to this and other questions regarding “how” these poets, and possible others as well, filter their emotions through the intellect, and is the foundation for this study.
Citation
Rolnick, Diane McGavock (2015). In the Name of the Father and the Mother: Mourning, Memory and Imagination in the Poetry of José Kozer, Tamara Kamenszain, and Eduardo Espina. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /155508.