Difficult Differences: Diferencias dificiles

Can the poet speak for others while at the same time expressing the conviction that he is "nobody" (like Ulysses)? Or feeling his own disauthorization? In modern times who has ever asked the poet to speak? Carlos imagines himself as other in order to talk about his own circumstances but that is often, ironically, as an other who does not have a voice himself. The worst fate is to have no voice or to have one that is scorned: to be a Cassandra or an "old weed", unable to do much more than scream. Out of such contradictions poetry emerges. (From the prologue by Roberta Ann Quance)