Luis Antonio de Villena is one of the most respected contemporary Spanish poets, as well as versatile writer of literary criticism, translations, novels, and articles in newspapers and periodicals. He is identified with the group of poets known as the novísimos (very new ones), also called the "Generation of 1970" or the "Generation of Language." He shares with these poets a faith in the capacity of language to mirror experiential reality, the definition of poetry within the creative act (metapoetry), culturalismo (culturalism), and intertextuality--the poetic integration of other literary texts. As other of this movement are, he is drawn to the cosmopolitan, the exotic, the hermetic, and occasionally what is known as "camp." Like the celebrated poet Luis Cernuda, he has openly pursued the motif of homosexual love. In Villena's work this motif occurs within the larger context of his dominant theme--the relationship of beauty, love, and...