Generacion del 98... again?!

I've read poetry from this era for another Spanish class before, and I don't remember being too enthusiastic about it. However, when I read our assigned poems for this week, I wondered to myself why I didn't like it before. The images that these poems paint in the mind when one reads them are very strange and different, but beautiful at the same time. And I thought it was interesting that I didn't really see the beauty in the first poem from Soledades until we discussed it in class and Professor Haidt talked about how much she loved it. And the fact that it has the ability to transport the reader to another time and place in the past with a few simple words is so powerful. I also find it very interesting, and it adds a sense of mystery, that there is a random voice in the poem that speaks out about the bells and describes the afternoon as having gone to sleep and "dreaming" now that it is nighttime. I like this because most people don't think about the course of the day like this, they just go about their business and the day passes along as they do this. Night fades into morning and morning into afternoon and so on, and most don't really see these inanimate objects as having feelings or committing actions like humans. But that is what makes this poem so beautiful, because night and day are inanimate, however there is so much animation that takes place during them that it is hardly believable.

-Emily Brown