Selected Verse: A Bilingual Edition

By Federico García Lorca

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374523525
• ISBN13: 9780374523527
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 343 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

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.

A Superb Cross-Section of Lorca's Work

The life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca tower over me - his delicate balance of exhaltation and alienation, of romanticism and cynicism, of life and death. Through the eyes of his poems, the gray skys and cold winds all around me blaze with a new vision. If I can ever do a tenth of what Lorca has done, as a writer, as a thinker, as a person trying to enjoy life, than I shall be more than satisfied.There is a pocket in my old Swiss Backpack that perfectly fits only one book for when I am away from home. This is the book that goes in it: You could take a whole case of Lorca's works but you would always be missing something. Instead, most of my favorate poems are in here, bilingual so there is no need for anyone to complain about the translator.The best way to experience any poet's work is through the ark of their life, over the vast ups and downs that go with any carrer. In this book, you can begin to feel that in Lorca's transitions and transformations of the mundane world into the extraordinary.

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.

Great, One of the best collections of Lorca's poems

Brilliant, emotions of positive and negative are tasted in this work