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Immortalized in death by The Clash, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dalí, Dmitri Shostakovich and Lindsay Kemp, Federico García Lorca's spectre haunts both contemporary Spain and the cultural landscape beyond.

This study offers a fresh examination of one of the Spanish language’s most resonant voices; exploring how the very factors which led to his emergence as a cultural icon also shaped his dramatic output.

The works themselves are also awarded the space that they deserve, combining performance histories with incisive textual analysis to restate Lorca’s presence as a playwright of extraordinary vision, in works such as:

• Blood Wedding
• The Public
• The House of Bernarda Alba
• Yerma.

Federico García Lorca is an invaluable new resource for those seeking to understand this complex and multifaceted figure: artist, playwright, director, poet, martyr and in the eyes of many, Spain’s ‘national dramatist’.

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La Zapatera Prodigiosa es una farsa simple, de puro tono clasico, donde se describe un espiritu de mujer... y se hace, al mismo tiempo y de manera tierna, un apologo del alma humana... Yo quise expresar en mi Zapatera... la lucha de la realidad con la fantasia (entendiendo por fantasia todo lo que es irrealizable) que existe en el fondo de toda criatura... No hay mas personaje que ella y la masa del pueblo que la circunda con un cinturon de espinas y carcajadas... Lo mas caracteristico de esta simple farsa es el ritmo de la escena, ligado y vivo, y la intervencion de la musica que me sirve para desrealizar la escena y quitar a la gente la idea de que aquello esta pasando de veras, asi como tambien para elevar el plano poetico con el mismo sentido que lo hacian nuestros clasicos (F. Garcia Lorca). Joaquin Forradellas es catedratico de I.N.B. en San Sebastian y ofrece en esta edicion un texto critico, enriquecido con muchos documentos que lo contextualizan y analizando desde muy varias perspectivas que permite una lectura de La Zapatera Prodigiosa sobre el trasfondo de todo el teatro lorquiano. ... Read more

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This bilingual edition (in Spanish and English) collects Jaime Manrique's lyrical and sensual poems about his childhood in Colombia, memories of his family, and his more recent experiences and loves in Manhattan. Musical and romantic, these poems are in the tradition of Pablo Neruda. ... Read more

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In 1926, as a young man of 28 with a growing reputation as an oral poet, Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) toyed with the idea of proving his worth in writing by bringing out a boxed set of three volumes of his verse. Because the Suites, Canciones, and the Poema del cante jondo eventually came out singly (in the case of the Suites, posthumously), readers have not always realised that they formed a single body of work -- one which, Lorca himself was surprised to note, has 'una rarisima unidad', an odd unity of aims and accomplishment. This is poetry which takes up the question of desire in progressively depersonalizing ways, and shows modernism coming into being. Through renunciation, by cutting away the personal and the taboo, Lorca created a poetry that, like no other in Europe, stood between the avant-garde and oral traditions, making their contradictions his truth. ... Read more

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The work of Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet, has long been admired for its emotional intensity and metaphorical brilliance. Few poets take us more directly and memorably to what Lorca described as "the dark root of the scream," the terrain of the duende, where inspiration delivers a new poetic reality and "intelligence" discovers its limitations.

For many years, until the recent publication of FSG's Collected Poems, English readers' view of Lorca has been determined by a few well-known books-The Divan at Tamarit, Poet in New York, The Gypsy Ballads-and by a lamentably small number of poems. Now this Selected Verse, the most complete paperback anthology available in English, draws on FSG's two-volume Poetical Works, providing authoritative versions by outstanding poets and translators: Francisco Aragon, Catherine Brown, Cola Franzen, Will Kirkland, William Bryant Logan, Jerome Rothernberge, Greg Simon, Alan S. Trueblood, John K. Walsh, and Steven F. White. In this bilingual edition, Lorca's poetic range comes clearly into view, from the playful Suites and stylized evocations of Andalusia to the utter gravity and mystery of the final elegies, confirming his stature as one of our century's finest poets.
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Customer Reviews (6)

Magnificent
I confess I'm jumping the gun here a bit.I have not finished the entire volume.But these poems are as richly textured and chock full of memorable images as any I've read.It is so sad that Lorca did not survive the Spanish Civil War.So many innocents did not, but oh, to have had Lorca live and develop as his friend Pablo Neruda did over the years...what fabulous more might he have left us.

I'll quote two back to back sections of one of the "Deep Song" poems (from the Poem of the Gypsy Siguiriya) first "The Cry" and then "The Silence": "The arc of a cry/ travels from hill/ to hill.// From the olive trees/ a black rainbow/ over the blue night.// Ay!// Like the bow of a viola/ the cry has set the wind's/ long strings to vibrating.// Ay!// (The people of the caves/ bring out their oil lamps.)// Ay!" : "Listen, my child, to the silence./ An undulating silence,/ a silence/ that turns valleys and echoes slippery,/ bends foreheads/ toward the ground."(Trans Cola Franzen)

If you owned only one F.G. Lorca, this would be a good choice.The selection is broad, translations varied enough that, alongside the Spanish, you can really get a feel for the poems, and Lorca is extraordinary.All in all, this volume is quite magnificent.

Often Powerful: 4.5 Stars
This is a very nicely produced bilingual selection of Garcia Lorca's poetry.The bilingual versions give even non-Spanish speakers a glimpse of Garcia Lorca's languge.There is a good deal of impressive poetry in this collection.I favor the earlier and later poetry.Some of the poetry from the middle of Garcia Lorca's abbreviated life exhibits more dense imagery and language, making it harder to understand.

Excellent selection, but with a few dud translations.
This volume has much to recommend it: the selections are just what you'd hope for [a nice cross-sampling of Lorca's forms, styles, voices, and developmental periods]; the introductory essay by editor Christopher Maurer is excellent, concise, and illuminating; and the translations are mostly brilliant.This is almost 5-star material.

I downgraded to 4 stars becasue several translations are too prosaic and literal for this most lyrical and oblique of poets.For example, Greg Simon and Steven White's translation of Danza de la muerte reads almost as flatly as a word-for-word transcription.The tripping rhythms and apocalyptic language of the original poem feel a bit bloodless in translation.Several of Cola Franzen's translations I think adhere too faithfully to the original structure, which doesn't work with English iambs, at least not without sacrificing music.

Of course, one cannot simply criticize a translation.At issue is an insoluble debate between faithfulness to the original in structure, diction, and sense, versus faithfulness to the original in sound, rhythm, and other musical aspects.The two faithfulnesses may be at conflict.

Anyway, this is an excellent selection, flawless except for those disappointingly flat-footed renderings.Can I propose a side-by-side-by-side format?Instead of Spanish next to a single English translation, how about Spanish next to a word-by-word, highly faithful translation, next to a more musical rendering?Sort of like this: Lorca-Simon/White-Ezra Pound?[As in his "translations" of Chinese poems?]Like I said:insoluble.

Garcia lorca doe it again
Whether you have children or not Buy this book. If you have children read them the landscape poetry in here.They will sing them in their sleep.It will take them on magical journeys to happy places and you also.

this is the one to buy
I just started browsing through a book of his poems in spanish one day and loved them, but my spanish is marginal.This has the spanish poems side by side with english translations, many of which I don't really like because they do things like switch words and lines and take a little too much freedom and change the spirit of the poem, but that's okay.You can read the spanish, read the english, and see exactly what has been changed, but the beauty is in the spanish ones, and though his vocabulary is large, yours doesn't really have to be to appreciate the sound and sight of these poems in spanish. I love many of the sonnets, plus the king of harlem, which reminds me of HCE from Finnegans Wake, this character that becomes the landscape itself, "after walking", and many others from the poet in new york.I've just been getting into some spanish poets after reading some st john of the cross and seeing what types of flows and life can be infused into words in this language, and these dark, bloody grimy oozes of language have had me high for weeks. ... Read more

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Known primarily as a poet and dramatist, Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca published four books before his early death in the Spanish Civil War. This biography gives an account of his family, his homosexuality and his mysterious death, as well as tracing his literary development. ... Read more

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Lorquiana!
I read this book years ago from cover to cover and I had never even read any Lorca.This book is huge!(500 pages!) But I completed it all.

I think that those interested in the lives of pre-Stonewall gays will find this especially enlightening.Lorca uses Freudian, problematic reasoning for explaining his gayness.Like Gide and many other insecure gays, he harps on feminine gay men.Like Langston Hughes, Yukio Mishima, and again Andre Gide, he was inspired by the homoerotic poetry of Walt Whitman.

In this book, it is implied that Lorca loved Dali and Dali was both repulsed and intrigued by that love.So that scenario of gay man having unrequited love for straight man is played out here.However, in the documentary "Split," the viewer sees Dali courting a she-male.In Manrique's "Eminent M*r*c*n*es," he states that an American man, later in his life, admitted that he and Dali had a sexual relationship.So Gibson's portrayal of Dali as exclusively heterosexual may be inaccurate.

In Lorca's last days, the fascists were taking over Spain and they may have killed him for prejudiced reasons.Now, Spain has a Socialist president who is seriously considering legalizing gay marriage.This book will help to track progress.Lorca may be to Spanish gay men what James Baldwin is to American ones. ... Read more

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