Poetry and Crisis

Poetry and Crisis argues that the 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid marked a critical turning point in Spanish society, with poetry taking a unique role in reflecting new political and cultural realities.

Jill Robbins is a professor emerita in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at the University of California, Merced.

"With sound analysis of lyric texts and performances, Poetry and Crisis sheds revealing light on how literary devices, including rhetorical questions, apostrophes, and metaphors, must be read with an attentive ear to their public reception and socio-cultural context, one here that is saturated by collective grief and trauma."

L. Elena Delgado, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

"This is an engaging, intelligent, and timely reflection on the role of poetry at times of personal and social crisis."