The days are considerably shorter, the dew is being imposed in the mornings and we will soon have to collect the steam by mouth between jersey and scarf. However, the end of the summer has been sweet for lovers of Basque literature: among others, the last poem of José Luis Otamendi has reached the shelves (Azpeitia, 1959). Landura (Susa, 2022) is the title of the ninth collection of poems in his trajectory, composed of 47 poems.

Until now, Otamendi has been present in the charms he proposes in the poem: concerns about the sociopolitical environment and about society in general have an important weight in the development of these words, including the lack of justice and the talk of coverage. “We say it exists but then / there is no food for everyone / we say it is enough and then / not everyone has that air enough to breathe / for everyone”. However, these concerns have their peculiarities in this collection, in which the reflections and questions about a possible time change stand out. Thus, there is talk of the old world and the new world and, among other things, of the health emergency and closure issues that have reached other literary works.

The poetic self also brings us to those who are especially global, but who are also globally regarded as cooking. This path gives rise to reflection on where the different ports of life or day to day are located: perhaps because it is also the field, and because the difficulty to look away at the other leads us to look close. We could suggest that the dichotomies between the interior and the exterior and the self and others are questioned: it is repeated more than once, among other things, the question of the meaning of others in the personal composition. The guidelines to be another is an indicator of the poem cited and leads us to another center of the collection: the so-called solidarity to recover humanity. Because the poet regrets that it has been a link and is no longer human.

The reader can find machines, objects, congratulatory tests and pieces of skin on these lines and will find out that he all invites to dive into the passage of time. The poems of narrative inspiration are thus similar to the search: Is there a new spring or sand beneath the stones of blood stained feet?