Long regarded as one of the premier Spanish modernists, Federico García Lorca's newly revised Collected Poems is a welcome contribution to this outstanding poet's prolific body of work. This bilingual edition includes many recently discovered poems and revised translations, updating the completeness of the verse produced by Lorca during his short life (he died at 38). Lorca's poetry is quirky, playful, not only filled with orange groves and olive trees, but a strange, physical world where a river has "garnet whiskers" or there exists a "recumbent sky" or "mummified ocean." Lorca wrote love poems, though we can never be sure what exactly is desired. His poetry isn't abstract, but the images are sometimes a bit out of reach--if anything, he tried to give the abstract a physical presence. For example, a lovers' exchange is given dimension in "The Poet Tells the Truth": "Let the skein never end / of I love you you love me, ever burnt / with decrepit sun and old moon." What Lorca wrote of a friend gored by a bull in "Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías" seems applicable to his poetry generally: "I sing of his elegance in words that moan / and I remember a sad breeze in the olive grove." Collected Poems is an important addition to any poetry collection, especially for those unfamiliar with Lorca or those who wish to read the poems in their original Spanish. --Michael Ferch


From Publishers Weekly
As readerly interest in Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) soared over the last 10 years, so too did scholarly attention to Lorca's work. A number of lost manuscripts were unearthed, and new, more authoritative translations, as well as a definitive four-volume collected works in Spanish, were published based on the findings. All this has inspired a new edition of Lorca's Collected Poems. Edited by Christopher Maurer (who also put together the last edition), the new bilingual edition includes the works from Poet in New York (previously published as a separate volume), newly recovered poems (including complete versions of the cycles "Fairs" and "Summer Hours") and some updated translations. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Life in the shadow of death, desire frustrated at every turn, and speech overtaken by the unknown are the concerns of this charismatic Spanish poet and dramatist. In the past decade, Lorca (1898-1936) has become an icon, and because so many new manuscripts, translations, and commentaries have surfaced, the previous edition of his collected poems (LJ 3/15/92) has been expanded and revised. It now incorporates Poet in New York (LJ 2/1/88), a volume of poems he composed during the nine months in 1929-30 that he spent in the city, which he deemed "one of the most useful experiences" of his life. Also included is a more "reliably ordered" version of one of the poet's most ambitious early sequences, "In the Garden of the Lunar Grapefruits," and some new translations by Angela Jaffray, Robert Nasatir, Jerome Rothenberg, and Galway Kinnell. All in all, the revised edition has about 100 more pages of text and about seven more pages of notes. The original edition should suffice for general collections, but for collections specializing in poetry or Spanish literature, this revised version should not be missed. Jack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, CumberlandCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Review
"[The translations are] both ingenious and accurate, setting a very high standard for translation of verse from Spanish." --Michael Wood, The New York Review of Books



Review
"[The translations are] both ingenious and accurate, setting a very high standard for translation of verse from Spanish." --Michael Wood, The New York Review of Books



Book Description
A revised edition of this major writer's complete poetical work

"And I who was walking
with the earth at my waist,
saw two snowy eagles
and a naked girl.
The one was the other
and the girl was neither."
--from "Qasida of the Dark Doves"

Federico García Lorca is the greatest poet of twentieth-century Spain and one of the world's most influential modernist writers. Christopher Maurer, a leading Lorca scholar and editor, has substantially revised FSG's earlier edition of the collected poems of this charismatic and complicated figure, who--as Maurer says in his illuminating Introduction--"spoke unforgettably of all that most interests us: the otherness of nature, the demons of personal identity and artistic creation, sex, childhood, and death."



About the Author
Federico García Lorca was born in 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, a few miles outside Granada in the province of Andalusia, southern Spain. From an early age he was fascinated by Spain's mixed heritage, adapting its ancient folk songs, ballads, lullabies, and flamenco music into poems and plays. By the age of thirty, he had published five books of poems, culminating in 1928 with Gypsy Ballads, which brought him far-reaching fame. In 1929-30 he studied in New York City, where he wrote the poems—among his most socially engaging and compelling—that were to be published posthumously (and famously) as Poet in New York. Upon returning to Spain he devoted much of his attention to theater, "the poetry which rises from the page . . . and becomes human." In 1936, at the outset of the Spanish Civil War, he was shot to death by anti-Republican rebels in Franco's army, and his books were banned and destroyed.

Christopher Maurer, the editor of García Lorca's Selected Verse, Poet in New York, and other works, is the author of numerous books and articles on Spanish poetry. He is head of the Department of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Federico Garcia Lorca was the most beloved poet of twentieth-century Spain and one of the world's most influential modernist writers. His work has long been admired for its passionate urgency and its haunting evocation of sorrow and loss. Perhaps more persistently than any writer of his time, he sought to understand and accommodate the numinous sources of his inspiration. Though he died young, at age thirty-eight, he left behind a generous body of poetry, drama, musical arrangements, and drawings, which continue to surprise and inspire.

Christopher Maurer, a leading Lorca scholar and editor, has brought together new and substantially revised translations by twelve poets and translators, improving on the first edition of Collected Poems, published in 1991. The seminal volume Poet in New York is also included here in its entirety. This is the most comprehensive collection in English of a poet who -- as Maurer writes in his illuminating introduction -- "spoke unforgettably of all that most interests us: the otherness of nature, the demons of personal identity and artistic creation, sex, childhood, and death."

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Review of Books

[The translations are] both ingenious and accurate, setting a very high standard for translation of verse from Spanish.

Michael Wood - The New York Review of Books

[The translations are] both ingenious and accurate, setting a very high standard for translation of verse from Spanish.

Book Magazine

Spanish poet García Lorca (1898-1936) represents one of the last century's greatest examples of the artist at work in society. A lifetime of concern for social injustice led to his execution at the hands of one of Franco's death squads at thirty-eight. García Lorca's interest in music and his gift as a playwright instill a narrative quality to his work; even the most impressionistic of poems expresses movement and light. The collection is a veritable Bible of poetic forms, dramatic textures and aesthetic invention. —Stephen Whited

Publishers Weekly

As readerly interest in Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) soared over the last 10 years, so too did scholarly attention to Lorca's work. A number of lost manuscripts were unearthed, and new, more authoritative translations, as well as a definitive four-volume collected works in Spanish, were published based on the findings. All this has inspired a new edition of Lorca's Collected Poems. Edited by Christopher Maurer (who also put together the last edition), the new bilingual edition includes the works from Poet in New York (previously published as a separate volume), newly recovered poems (including complete versions of the cycles "Fairs" and "Summer Hours") and some updated translations. ( Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal