Queer Futurity and Conflicted Feeling(s) in the Poetry of Ariadna G. García

Abstract

The work of Spanish poet Ariadna G. García (Madrid, 1977) occupies an unusual place within the archive of modern queer Spanish poetry. Collections like Construyéndome en ti (1997), Napalm. Cortometraje poético (2001), La Guerra de Invierno (2013), Helio (2014), and Ciudad sumergida (2018) are the product of a changing society in which poets can engage with questions surrounding queer participation in social institutions like couples and families as a concrete reality instead of imagined and anticipated future possibilities. The past(s), present(s), and future(s) that García’s poems explore highlight the potential that both negative and positive emotions have as sources of meaning for queer subjects and vehicles through which to imagine and think through potential alternative roles, identities, and opportunities. This poetry traces how poetic subjects who seek out social benefits and strive to make the most of fleeting moments of happiness and record past and present struggles for future generations stake out a complex position between hetero- and homonormativity and look beyond what José Esteban Muñoz has termed “the quagmire of the present.” Futurity in García’s work thus builds on positive affect in the present to imagine, project and cope with future moments, in the process demonstrating that queer utopianism need not rely on a negative view of the present to imagine a more inclusive future.

Keywords:

• Affect
• Ariadna G. García
• contemporary Spanish poetry
• futurity
• queer poetry

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Enrique Álvarez, Alfredo Martínez Expósito, and Gema Pérez-Sánchez for their thorough and insightful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Following the publication of her first collection, García won the prestigious Premio Hiperión de Poesía with her next collection, Napalm. Cortometraje poético (2001), followed four years later by Apátrida, which received the Premio de Arte Joven –Poesía– de la Comunidad de Madrid. Almost a decade later she published La Guerra de Invierno (2013), which received the Premio Internacional «Miguel Hernández-Comunidad Valenciana» and was a finalist for the Premio de la Crítica de Madrid. This collection was followed by Helio a year later and then by Línea de flotación (2017) and Ciudad sumergida (2018). García is also the author of two novels, Inercia (2014) and El año cero (2019), in addition to a volume of children’s poetry, Las noches de Ugglebo (2016). Her work has appeared in both generational and gendered anthologies like Veinticinco poetas españoles jóvenes (2003) and (Tras)lúcidas. Poesía escrita por mujeres (1980–2016) (2016).

2 Perhaps the clearest example of this approach can be found in García Montero’s 1992 essay entitled “¿Por qué no sirve para nada la poesía? (Observaciones en defensa de una poesía para los seres normales),” included in ¿Por qué no es útil la literatura? (1993), a volume co-authored with Spanish novelist Antonio Muñoz Molina. For a thorough overview of the tenets and tendencies of the poesía de la experiencia, see “Palabras de familia gastadas tibiamente (Notas para la historia de un paradigma lírico),” the introduction to Araceli Iravedra’s anthology of this school of poetry.

3 Particularly notable examples of this same sort of critique can be found in Jorge Riechmann’s “El derrotado duerme en el campo de batalla” (31), the Colectivo Alicia Bajo Cero’s Poesía y poder, and Vicente Luis Mora’s Singularidades. Ética y poética de la literatura española actual (49–52).

4 Proponents of Queer Utopianism include critics like Tim Dean, José Esteban Muñoz, and Michael D. Snediker, while those whose work privileges negativity include Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Jack Halberstam.

5 Some of the contemporary poets Castro puts in this category include Cristina Peri Rossi (1941–), Pureza Canelo (1946-), Concha García, Katy Parra (1964–), María Eloy-García (1972–), and Txus García (1974–).

6 Duggan’s term follows Susan Stryker’s earlier use of the term homonormativity “to articulate the double sense of marginalization and displacement experienced within transgender political and cultural activism” (145).

7 In Dentro/Fuera. El espacio homosexual masculino en la poesía española del siglo XX, his study of gay male Spanish poets Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), Cernuda, Gil de Biedma, and Luis Antonio de Villena (1951–), Enrique Álvarez attributes a similar potential for “reworking […] the heteronormative” to queer identities, identifying “un reverso táctico que transforma los territorios del trauma y de la marginación homosexual en el distintivo de una subjetividad queer que, si por un lado reafirma el modelo de sociabilidad heterosexual, cuestiona por el otro su eficacia” (17).

8 The intertextual dialogue between García’s work and that of gay male poets like Cernuda and Gil de Biedma could be the object of its own study. For our purposes, it is worth pointing out that the work of both Cernuda and García presents a basic trajectory made up of anticipated experiences and encounters, actual encounters, and imagined encounters in distant and isolated spaces. One of the most significant differences between Cernuda’s and García’s representation of queer affect and experience, though, is the more antisocial approach that characterizes much of Cernuda’s work.

9 In a study dedicated to the poetry of Francisco Brines, Mayhew explains that “[p]ronouns of ambiguous gender . . . are more frequent in gay than in heterosexual love poetry, in which there is no particular reason to conceal the sex of the object of desire” (“Francisco Brines,” 142). For a discussion of Cernuda’s use of tú as a splitting technique, see Michael Ugarte’s Shifting Ground: Spanish Civil War Exile Literature (170–71).

10 While to a certain extent one could draw a parallel between this poem from Construyéndome en ti and Gil de Biedma’s “Albada” (84-85), which is itself built upon an intertextual dialogue with a medieval form, it is also important to ask whether the social consequences faced by each couple would be the same.

11 A similar phenomenon appears in “Nevada” and “Daytona,” two poems included in Cernuda’s Un río, un amor (147; 154–55).