Rafael Cadenas

Contestaciones - 2018

En torno a Basho y otros asuntos - 2016

Sobre abierto - 2012

Material de lectura - 1995

Selección y nota introductoria de Julio Ortega.

Gestiones - 1992

Amante - 1983

Intemperie - 1977

"Heredar un texto de Intemperie es aceptar una inmediatez profusa. Intemperie es un encuentro, a cuentagotas, de un hombre y su voz; en su voz. Un hombre que nos enseña que se puede sufrir asombros por la palabra que identificándose a sí misma, toma vuelo; se aleja de un decir determinante: Me retomo. / Hace tiempo me dejé en un borde. / Allí donde el azufre del monólogo / hacía imposible respirar.

El poeta sigue su camino hacia tierras recónditas de su pensamiento. Mensajero y caminante, va recogiendo voces y azufre de los condenados a vagar. El poeta Zen, Ko Un, se interpreta a la intemperie: un siglo en tu regazo / sin patria / sin amigos / sin camino/ que pueda aprender / Qué delirio, / el territorio de oscuridad. El poeta Cadenas se sabe cercano al abismo; sin embargo, este contexto es también claridad, un estar vertiginoso." Ernesto Román Orozco

Memorial - 1977

Dibujos a máquina - 1966

Falsas maniobras - 1966

Derrota - 1963

Los cuadernos del destierro - 1960

Una isla - 1958

Dichos - 1992

En torno al lenguaje - 1984

Reflexiones sobre la ciudad moderna - 1983

Anotaciones - 1983

Realidad y literatura - 1979

Publicado originalmente en 1979, Realidad y literatura no solo es el más extenso ensayo escrito Rafael Cadenas, sino un texto clave para comprender la transformación que en ese período experimenta su obra. Bajo su aparente sencillez y su sosegada prosa, oculta una compleja pluralidad en la que confluyen la reflexión existencial, el comentario literario, el diagnóstico cultural y el manifiesto poético. En su conjunto, todos esos aspectos configuran el escenario de la trama de tensiones que confiere a este libro tanto la fuerza retórica que despliega como la honestidad que lo atraviesa. Reflexión, ensayo, diagnóstico, manifiesto… Realidad y literatura es todo eso y, a la vez, la puesta en escena de una lucha interior, la encarnación de una búsqueda y una transformación. 

Apuntes sobre San Juan de la Cruz y la mística - 1977

A Rilke, variaciones - 2024

In this moving collection of poems, Rafael Cadenas pays tribute to the figure of Rainer Maria Rilke, one of his most admired literary influences. What makes Rilke such a special poet? How did he change Cadenas’ way of reading and writing poetry? What existential, literary and personal link unites the great teacher and his humble apprentice? A poetic dialogue, as austere as it is brimming with expressive richness and sensitivity, in which Cadenas delves deeper into a revelation that transformed his life.

Cuando nace el poema - 2023

The present anthology aims to bring the reading public closer to the most representative compositions of Cadenas's poetic career, including poems that allow us to appreciate the stylistic and conceptual evolution of the author's work as a whole. When the Poem is Born, it also takes its name from the composition that opens "Una isla" (1958), as a poem that underscores the way poetry inhabits the soul and embodies the body. Poetry in Cadenas reflects a commitment to the political and the human, but also a dialogue with the essential mystery of the world, like a mantle that envelops his verses in an unalterable way. It is a lyric that—from his early compositions to his latest poems— is made of perceptions and emerges from honesty. Cadenas, without succumbing to the weight of recognition, shuns notoriety and fanfare, because, above all, there is the poem.

Florecemos en un abismo: Poemas (Premio Cervantes 2022) - 2023

We are celebrating the award of the 2022 Cervantes Prize to the poet Rafael Cadenas with a new anthology titled Florecemos en un abismo.
Its pages cover most of his most important books (Una isla, Los cuadernos del destierro, Memorial, Amante...), together with a compilation of six unpublished poems under the title of Poemas de Trinidad.
Some of the themes that appear in all of Cadenas’s work can be found here: love and women, the notion of life as a poetic experience and an “island”: that all-encompassing image of fragile frontiers that links us, at the same time, to exile as an existential condition and to the deployment of the poetic subject.

“'Humble, silent and rebellious’ are words Cadenas used to describe himself in his poems. In fact, his tendency to keep quiet has resulted in a less and less embroidered style of writing. The Cervantes Prize jury has highlighted this condition by rewarding a body of work that “demonstrates the transformative power of the word when language is pushed to the limits of its creative possibilities.”
El País 

Las paces. Antología poética (1958-2016) - 2021

The Land of Mild Light - 2021

Few writers have embodied the heart and soul of a nation as fully as Venezuela’s Rafael Cadenas. Poet, translator, and educator, the ninety-year-old Cadenas has been admired and acclaimed by Spanish-language readers for over half a century. At once painterly, personal, and philosophical, Cadenas’ poetry conveys both the poet’s pride in and his awareness of the struggles of his native land. His poems, probing the relationships between reality and consciousness against the backdrop of intense political ferment, could not be more timely. In The Land of Mild Light, poet, editor, and broadcaster Nidia Hernandez has assembled Cadenas’ most important poems in vivid translations by some of the English-speaking world’s finest poets and translators, including Robert Pinsky, Forrest Gander, Sophie Cabot Black and others. The selection includes an informative introduction by poet, translator and long-time resident of Venezuela, Rowena Hill.

Antología - 2018

Antología poética - 2016

Obra entera. Poesía y prosa (1958-1998) - 2007

Poemas selectos - 2004

Antología (1958-1993) - 1996