Collected Poems

by García Lorca, Federico; Maurer, Christopher; Maurer, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780374526917
• ISBN10: 0374526915
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-01
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

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 Garciacute;a 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." Federico Garcia Lorca, born in Granada in 1898, is widely seen as Spain's greatest modern poet. Among his best-known books areThe Divan at Tamarit,Poet in New York, andThe Gypsy Ballads. He was murdered by Franco's soldiers in 1936. Christopher Maurer, the editor of Garcia Lorca'sSelected 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. This newly revised magnum opus offers us the entire poetic achievement of the most beloved poet of 20th-century Spain--and one of the world's most influential modernist writers. For this monumental collection, Maurer, a leading Lorca scholar and editor, has assembled new and substantially reworked translations by twelve poets and translators from a range of scholarly backgrounds and creative traditions. ThisCollected Poemsis therefore as thorough as it is accessible, featuring a fully bilingual format (with Spanish and English texts on facing pages throughout) as well as an index of titles and first lines. Also, the seminal volumePoet in New Yorkis included in its entirety. This is the most comprehensive English edition of the world-class 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." "Meticulously and yet unobtrusively edited . . . After 900-plus pages of unremitting brilliance, Lorca emerges as positively visionary."--Rafael Campo,The Washington Post "With new and substantially revised translations by twelve poets and translators, plus the inclusion of the completePoet in New York, this volume is one of the masterworks from the art of translation and world literature. Maurer has devoted decades of his life to Garcia Lorca, and his commitment to bringing the poet's work to English audiences has paid off. To have Garcia Lorca's work presented in its entirety is breathtaking, essential, and shows us how the 20th century's greatest poets survived darkness through the eternal power of poetry."--Ray Gonzalez,The Bloomsbury Review "Compliments and salutations are . . . due to the eminent Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer for bringing out this year, some 66 years after the poet's gruesome assassination near his home in Granada, the first almost complete bilingual edition of the Lorca corpus, with many previously uncollected and unpublished poems translated here for the first time. The volume is 'almost complete' due to the fact that the editor has thankfully given us only a brief selection from Lorca's first collection,The Book of Poems, the poet's lengthiest book and easily the worst, plain and simple . . . Twelve translators have particip

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction, by Christopher Maurer

From BOOK OF POEMS
(Translated by Catherine Brown)

POEM OF THE DEEP SONG
(Translated by Cola Franzen, Christopher Maurer, and Robert Nasatir)

SUITES
(Translated by Jerome Rothenberg)

Appendix to SUITES

SONGS, 1921-1924
(Translated by Alan S. Trueblood)

THE GYPSY BALLADS, 1924-1927
(Translated by Will Kirkland and Christopher Maurer)

ODES
(Translated by William Bryant Logan, Greg Simon, and Steven F. White)

POET IN NEW YORK
(Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White)

TRIP TO THE MOON
(Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White)

"Childhood and Death"
Poems from EARTH AND MOON
(Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White)

THE TAMARIT DIVAN
(Translated by Catherine Brown)

SIX GALICIAN POEMS
(Translated by Catherine Brown)

LAMENT FOR IGNACIO SÁNCHEZ MEJÍAS
(Translated by Galway Kinnell)

[SONNETS OF DARK LOVE]
(Translated by Angela Jaffray)

OTHER SONNETS, 1923-1936
(Translated by Christopher Maurer)

UNCOLLECTED POEMS
ard(Translated by Christopher Maurer)

Notes to the Poems, by Christopher Maurer

Bibliography

The Translators

Index of Titles and First Lines

Índice de títulos y primeros versos