In Politics and Verbal Play Martha LaFollette Miller traces the evolution of the poetry of Angel Gonzalez from his early existential and social period through later works that draw heavily on verbal and conceptual play for their effect.

Born in Oviedo, Spain, in 1925, Gonzalez has been recognized as one of the foremost poets of his generation in that country. From the beginning, his work has combined social criticism (most often expressed through irony) with an intense lyricism (mostly elegiac in tone). Though social and elegiac elements have never completely disappeared from his work, his poetry in the late sixties began to undergo a significant transformation.

As he describes this process, his loss of hope for political change in Spain led to his abandonment of faith in the poetic word. Moving away from poetry based on a fusion of everyday experiences and universal history, he entered the world of literary games. Instead of mirroring personal history or events in the world, he turned toward poetic jokes, verbal play, and parody. As the poet himself has noted, he converted his critique of society into a critique of language and his own powers of expression.

1. Miller bases her study of Gonzalez's evolution on what might be termed post-modern critical foundations: the notion that literary works do not spring from the author as rational source, but rather from a complex web of historical, literary, linguistic, and intellectual realities in which the author is enmeshed and the reader/audience/critic also implicated.