Poetry. It lays bare the truth, stripping away pretension until the core is visible—the heart, the guts, and the pulse that runs beneath. Some poems dig deep, exposing the inner self until it feels almost sacred in its nakedness. Others push through the page, striking us with a force that demands a second reading as we search for a glimmer of light. Open wounds appear at unpredictable moments, roiling some readers while sounding bravely honest to all who listen. The result is a poetics that feels austere, hypnotic, and unmistakably interior, a work that comes from the inside out.
From a Catalan publisher, with a foreword by a renowned critic, The Hunger Years begins with unease and slides toward a sense that something dark might emerge, an exorcism of sorts. The opening poem, titled First, declares its intent with lines such as You stop eating sweets at twelve and It’s not a deduction, it’s a rule. The verses trace a pilgrimage of the Holy Face where blood reaches the knees, while the speaker moves as a repentant sinner, Guilty. The lines insist that a portion of meat must be cut here and now. The body mutates, making space for what follows. The opening stance is bold, signaling a long, unflinching inquiry into the body and the self.
The Hunger Years establishes a distinct identity. Nine Months, divided into five chapters—Love Poetry, Animals, Hunger, and Malquist—offers a portrait of a lyric voice that speaks with raw honesty. The poet writes from intimate ground, exposing emotion without shielding or mimicking a distant poise. This collection stands out as a significant lyric work. Few others traverse so clearly the terrain of courage, pain, arrogance, and zeal, turning into beauty; and in only a few places does a line, born of pure verse, stain itself with passion and blood while preserving a classical breath and lucid beauty.
There is much beauty in this work. The poet knows how to filter beauty through the lines, as in a striking poem from the Animals section titled Butterfly. A dead butterfly lies on the bathroom floor, and the speaker kneels in the sand as it flaps its wings in the air. By seeking the glow of those wings, a cave seems to form in the hands, and the speaker climbs toward the top of the name, surrendering it to the wind so the creature rises again. Influences from Anne Carson, Ada Salas, Clara Janés, Sylvia Plath, and the rough edge of Carver surface with clarity. Phrases cut like knives: Someone touches you as if you’re running away, lifts you up, grabs you by the hips in the moment of intimacy. A chilling question lingers about who is more unsettling, leaving the speaker exposed and hungry, not merely with a hollow stomach but with a deeper longing.
The Hunger Years delivers a wake-up call that lands with force. The poetry leans on precise lyric sources, yet each poem crafts its own image and its own light. Even within a bleak landscape, beams of brightness appear, and the poems often reveal beauty behind the wound. Jasmine stands as a notable example, where a straightforward claim about self-visibility becomes a path to resilience: Those who reveal themselves hold less vulnerability, and the act of climbing onto the bed at night becomes a fragrance of jasmine that lingers in memory.
The author was born in Alicante in 1980 and lives by the sea. A teacher of Spanish language and literature, the author has published several works, including titles from the mid-2010s. The book under discussion marks a stark and intimate chapter, introducing a voice capable of mixing courage with tenderness and turning pain into radiant, resonant verse. The poems invite readers to witness a life lived in language, to hear the breath between lines, and to feel the tension of art that refuses to soften its edge. (Citation: The Hunger Years review, attribution for critical reception)