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José María Álvarez, born in Cartagena, Spain in 1942, is a Spanish poet y novelist.

The principal work of Álvarez is Museo de cera (The Wax Museum)  which has been a work in progress over many years due the author's endeavouring the completion of a unique and all-encompassing book (un libro único y totalizador). Nevertheless, in the most recent edition Álvarez brings the cycle to a conclusion. José María Álvarez has followed a number of the trends in contemporary Spanish poetry passing from socially aware poetry to a culturalism deriving from his life experience. His protagonist is no revolutionary wishing to change lives, but a bon vivant, disdainer of vulgarity, lover of lost causes.

His poems are often bipartite:
 * 1) An introductory quote (allusions to cinema mythography, theatrical dialogugues, fragments of novels, poems, essays, song lyrics, etc.) and
 * 2) The poem as such, which attempts to organise chaos, to explain an incomprehensible world.

In 2003, he published his reminiscences Los decorados del olvido (The stage sets of oblivion) , a poetic work reflecting, generally in a sarcastic tone, on sex and society.

External Links (in Spanish)

 * CTpedia
 * His personal Web Page
 * Poems of José María Álvarez
 * José María Álvarez in Cisne Negro (The Black Swan)
 * José María Álvarez, Sobre Shakespeare (On Shakespeare) (El Gaviero Ediciones, Almería, 2005).