The Intimacy of Distance: Homelessness and Homecoming in the Poetry of Marina Romero

Most studies of Republican exiles in the United States ignore Marina Romero’s poetry, in spite of its artistic insight and philosophical depth. This chapter analyzes how the temporal and emotional discontinuities of exile create epistemological and ontological detachments in her poetry. Exile shattered her poetic ideal of an open conceptualization of the self and forced Romero’s poetry to root itself in homelessness. While she yearns for a homecoming that will avoid the impoverishment of the self, she searches for an exilic grammar to bridge distances and interact meaningfully with the world. With palpable tension between the need to rely on her subjectivity and her rejection of the modern concept of the self-sufficient individual that engenders the homeless spirit, Romero’s poetry lives in the homelessness of exile. Her attempts at achieving a homecoming will eventually come undone, and her struggle unmasks the intimate contradictions of exile. Romero’s poetic vision brings to the fore philosophical questions in a never-ending effort to overcome inner and outer distances: Must exilic thinking be homeless? What homecoming is possible for it?