Los sitios interiores, by Rafael Soler

Who writes a letter to themselves? Who stops in front of their own mirror, reads, rereads, sits down, picks up a pen (or the computer) and begins to write to contemplate that other writing, those verses published 40 years ago?

Who goes back to the past to place themselves in the present and leave written proof of it? What is there between that yesterday and today?

And who publishes a book and does not put the title or the author's name on the front or back cover? Not even the publisher's stamp. Not a single letter, perhaps because the words are already more than well placed in the verses collected in its pages. How can anyone buy a work of poetry without the visual claim of its author, without the great headline, Los sitios interiores. Sonata urgente, well highlighted? Take a risk. Play.

The answer would be: two mad romantics, more in love with the project and the idea than with anything else. Two crazy dreamers guided by originality and trust in the curiosity of the people who approach this book, who want to know what door the key on the cover opens, what is behind the lock that opens onto the sea. That sea so ever-present in the life of the author, Rafael Soler, who, like the waves, allows himself to be carried away by the editor of Cuadernos de la Errantía, Raúl Nieto de la Torre, who republishes this work, published in its day in the Adonais Collection, and asks Soler to write himself a letter as an introduction. Trusting. One in the other. The two of them. In each other. 

Letters that begin these poems full of sensitivity, where there is no lack of childhood, love and the sea. Profound verses that sail through those inner immensities of the writer, memories of yesteryear, lost, longed for, present, painful, joyful.

This engineer, who was a professor at the Polytechnic, handles the pen with infinite wisdom as he investigates life from his own particular viewpoint, towards himself, towards that horizon that surrounds him... Living is a personal matter, read this sentence slowly. And think. It is the title of Soler's great work in which his six collections of poems are collected. And so are his verses... so personal.

Provocative with his language, rebellious with his feelings, complicated at times in his reflections, transparent also like his ever-present sea... The everyday and what goes beyond simplicity come together. Who said there would be another summer, that we would never be older, he asks in the poem Canto a un grillo viejo y mío.

This writer, with Olor de chiquillo que nunca llega al mar, takes us by the hand along the shore so that we can observe calmly, but also through those complicated labyrinths so that each of us can search, find ourselves.

If you see a cover with a key on a background of black and white squares, you know, there is Rafael Soler. Los sitios interiores. Sonata urgente, it urges us all.