Further than their aesthetic and expressive diversity, [Claudio Rodríguez and José Ángel Valente] have the radical character of their task in common, that is, the naked and urgent boldness with which they both face the search for the absolute in the poetic word.
[…] not a single poem by Claudio Rodríguez is easily translatable into logical language. In some of them the meaning is diaphanous; in others, it is extremely dark, no doubt even for the poet himself who tries to name the world from language, tentatively, instead of thinking that his perception of the world turns him into the commander of language.
[…] Furthermore, not only the Castilian language, but also Castile itself are in Claudio Rodríguez’s verse: as we know since Unamuno, only starting from the local can one really arrive at the universal.
[…] Almost any of Claudio’s verses was an is definitive and indelible in itself, i.e., basically impossible to correct save in the tiniest details. Whether they were the result of a long effort or of an immediate inspiration, once they were written, they owned the print of the enduring, of what can be quoted not only as the adage by a classical poet but also as the peak of anonymous poetry of oral tradition, like some Latin verses or some passages in the Hispanic Romancero.