The recent gatherings hosted at a well known cultural center in Elche offered a space to explore the mystique of poetry. monthly discussions focused on the poetics of a prominent Spanish poet, with participants unraveling what mysticism can mean in literature. After sharing diverse perspectives, the group began to map out what truth means in verse. The idea that there is a universal truth alongside personal, subjective truth sparked a lively debate about poetry as a riddle waiting to be solved. Some attendees argued that certain readers cling to individual truths, insisting their own visions should lead the conversation, while others sought a collective understanding that could unite disparate voices through shared human experience.
The publication titled We Don’t Know What, issued by a Madrid press, furthers this inquiry into truth. The book opens with a poem often described as a road poem, signaling the author’s commitment to the craft and to the observer’s stance: a declaration of intention, a vow to write, and an acknowledgment that craft and process can coexist with content and meaning. The lines suggest a balance between satisfaction with a finished piece and the ongoing joy found in the act of creation. There is a sense that thoughtful observation requires letting go of heavy consequences, allowing thought to emerge through lived perception rather than through pressured outcomes.
Inside the collection, the poet’s everyday language reveals a deep engagement with universal themes. In one poem titled Holiday Day, a narrator layers memory, present experience, and social observation. The scene unfolds with a visit to a bar near home, where drinks symbolize a larger rhythm of life. The conversation turns to recent readings, the fatigue of grand lectures, the grind of daily work, and the smoky atmosphere that shadows daily life. This approach grounds the lyric in everyday moments, showing how small details can open doors to broader reflections on existence and time. The voice works through ordinary scenes to connect the local with the universal, inviting readers to see their own lives in the poem’s folds.
What follows is a four part structure that guides readers through encounter, disagreement, transcendence, and outcomes. A prologue frames the speaker as someone increasingly alienated from surroundings perceived as dull or oppressive. The narrative voices a critique of social conditioning and the contempt it can breed, underscoring a shared sense of alienation felt by many. The writing contends with the pressure to conform, emphasizing that the pain of being shaped by others can become the central obstacle to authentic expression. Across the collection, the theme of oppression and its social consequences remains a persistent thread, highlighting the human urge to resist becoming someone one is not intended to be.
In closing, the final poem revisits a recurring dreamlike quality, suggesting that reality and imagination intertwine in complex ways. The poet invites the reader to consider how imagination often reformulates what is real, and how personal vision can both illuminate and distort shared experience. The work asserts that truth in storytelling is not a single fixed point but a mosaic stitched from many moments. Not every narrative is fully factual, and not every poem holds every truth. Yet the collection presents a vivid portrait of how language and perception brush against each other to reveal meaning that resonates across different lives and places.