Jose Angel Valente Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Jose Angel Valente

José Angel Valente is in a group of Spanish poets who came to the fore in the late 1950s and 1960s, which also includes such writers as Claudio Rodríguez, Carlos Sahagún, Francisco Brines, Eladio Cabañero, and Angel González. The work of this group cannot be classified very easily: it reaches beyond the social orientation of earlier post-civil-war poetry and also deepens the philosophical queries about humanity's position that appear in the work of earlier poets such as José Hierro and Blas de Otero. The common denominator of the poetry of this later group can be found not in its proclamation of certain shared themes or its utilization of a particular style but rather in its attitude regarding the creative act. Poetry is seen as both the cognition and the communication of modern human reality. Thus poetry is not just a result and a reflection but a conscious process.

Valente was born on 25 April 1929 in Orense, Galicia, Spain, and thus belongs to the second generation of poets who came into prominence after the disastrous Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

Read the rest of this Biography with our Jose Angel Valente Access Pass.