Joan Margarit
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‘Unlike
Heraclitus, Margarit is prepared to believe that we can bathe in the
same river twice: because we can wait for and then miss the same trains[…]
These are the ideas that blossom in Margarit’s poems; these are
the blueprints of human experience which, when drawn in Margarit’s
language, acquire the unique shape of his private, heartfelt understanding.’ (Emilio Lledó: “Lenguaje, poesía, y amor” at the presentation of Margarit’s Estació de França, Madrid, 1999) |
‘Poetry
may be the carrot-on-a-stick promise of a return that is in fact illusory,
but there is a moment in our lives, and one which I believe is close
by for me now, when return becomes far more palpable and when the meaning
of time becomes sharper and more poignant; a time when one senses the
presence of death, and especially of the dead. And so while once I felt
most attracted to the more “gracious” Margarit of poems
such as old Hekatònim or the passage Podria ser la pàtria,
now I can now uproot from the blind earth of indifference the marvel
of Poem VI in Vell malentès; now I can follow in their flight
the verses of Edat roja. And like the unexpected feeling of the rain,
in the windmill of the bones I suddenly feel the dark melancholy of
Joan Margarit.’ (Maria Mercè Marçal, “La fosca melangia de Joan Margarit”, in the literary review URC, spring-summer, 1991.) |
‘While
he uses many features of prose, Margarit is a profound poet. And he’s
also an honest one.’ (Josep Faulí, “Novetats i confirmacions en un Joan Margarit antològic”, Avui, 11/9/1997.) |
‘Note
with care the common ground created between poetry and life in the books
of the Catalan poet Joan Margarit, for it is in the complexity of this
common ground that we find the backbone of his work […] Cien poemas
offers us the itinerary of one of the best Catalan poets in recent decades.’ (Luis García Montero, “La poesía habitable de Margarit”, El Pais, 1/11/1997.) |
‘When
common sense does not hamper the language of poetry and meditation is
not incompatible with genius and inspiration, there we find collections
of poetry such as Estació de França. […] Characterised
by a rare lyricism, [Margarit] is an author who is able, like few others,
to catch the essence of the fleeting instant and express it with such
enviable immediacy.’ (Ramón Andrés, El Periódico, 7/5/1999.) |
‘Margarit
approaches the lyric with the sobriety and understatement that is customary
in his poetry, and he lets its elegance give it force […]. He
has no interest in invoking tragic destiny or in summoning others to
the dock, for stridency of form or idea are quite alien to his work;
in this sense, he is a rational poet.’ (Miquel de Palol, El Mundo, 15/4/2002.) |
[Poesia
amorosa completa] breaks the mold of traditional poetry in two ways:
first, it challenges the idea that love should be related to youth and
can only be regarded from the angle of what we might call erotic surprise;
second, it breaks with the typical idea of the “book”, finding
greater meaning for this, like the best poets do, in an oeuvre that
approaches biography.’ (Pere Rovira, Avui, 10/5/2001.) |
‘Margarit
is one of the most significant poetic voices of the last twenty years.
[…] One of his greatest qualities is his ability to make such
personal poetry accessible to others; that the private discoveries and
perplexities expressed in his poems have touched his readers in such
a way that they are able to feel their own.’ ( Francisco Díaz de Castro, El Mundo, 16/5/2001.) |
‘We
know that literature is a fight to the death against death itself, but
it had been a long time since I had read any book in which that truth
was so visible. So terribly visible, indeed.’ (Javier Cercas, “La primera muerte”, El Pais, 25/8/2002.) |
‘The
poetry of Joan Margarit is substantial, and as poetry it is also profoundly
musical. I consider it to be substantial because it attempts to express
in a simple way only what is most important and because it uses very
few adjectives, with intensity and precision.’
(Miquel Martí i Pol, La Vanguardia, 11/3/1986.) |
‘Joan
Margarit’s work tends to be characterised by two apparently contrasting
structural features: books woven around a single central theme […]
or a collection of isolated poems […]. La dona del navegant and
Llum de pluja are excellent examples of these, and Edat roja is a disturbing
synthesis of both.’ (Francesc Parcerisas, El Pais, 18/10/1990.) |
‘One
of the best, if not the very best, of all contemporary Catalan poets.’ (Luis Antonio de Villena, El Mundo, 30/5/1998.) |
‘Were
Joan Margarit to have written in Italian, French, English, Portuguese
or Spanish, the quality of his writing would still have been high: his
Catalan is burnished, clear and direct, and its magic and speed provide
him with a vehicle that perfectly expresses the content of each poem.
Always providing his work with the most appropriate compositional balance
and invariably bringing with it an element of surprise, this language
shakes and moves the reader and I, for one, must confess that he is
among my favourite poets. Read Primer amor.’
(José Agustin Goytisolo, “21 poetas catalanes para el siglo XXI”, Lumen, 1996.) |
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