El siglo XVIII fue una época clave en el desarrollo del pensamiento español. División entre el mundo barroco y el mundo moderno, constituyó una apertura a la modernidad europea y una ruptura con los viejos esquemas de la tradición nacional. Los "ilustrados" propugnaron "un poeta nuevo" que muchos vieron personificado en Meléndez Valdés. Junto a este poeta, la antología recoge los autores más importantes: Cadalso, Forner, Jovellanos, los Moratín, Lista y así hasta un total de veintiséis poetas.

"This is a major book for the field of contemporary Latin American poetry, original in its scope, depth, and breadth.... It is a showcase of recent currents of expression in Latin America." —Jacobo Sefamí, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Irvine Has poetry lost its relevance in the postmodern age, unable to keep pace with other forms of cultural production such as film, mass media, and the Internet? Quite the contrary, argues Jill Kuhnheim in this pathfinding book, which explores how recent Spanish American poetry participates in the fundamental cultural debates of its time. Using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, Kuhnheim engages in close readings of numerous poetic works to show how contemporary Spanish American poetry struggles with the divisions between politics and aesthetics and between visual and written images; grapples with issues of ethnic, national, sexual, and urban identities; and incorporates rather than rejects technological innovations and elements from the mass media. Her analysis illuminates the ways in which contemporary issues such as indigenismo and Latin America's postcolonial legacy, modernization, immigration, globalization, economic shifts toward neoliberalism and informal economies, urbanization, and the technological revolution have been expressed in—and even changed the very form of—Spanish American poetry since the 1970s.