Poet in New York (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Federico García Lorca (Author), Christopher Maurer (Editor), Christopher Maurer (Editor), Federico García Lorca (Author), Greg Simon (Translator), Christopher Maurer (Introduction), Steven F White (Translator), Christopher Maurer (Introduction)

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $13.80

  'There has been no more terribly acute critic of America than this steel-conscious and death-conscious Spaniard, with his curious passion for the modernities of nickel and tinfoil and nitre ...'. So wrote Conrad Aiken of Lorca's violent response to the New York he encountered as a student at Columbia University in 1929 and 1930. Born and brought up in Andalusia, Lorca's reaction to the brutality and loneliness of the vast city was one of amazement and indignation. His poetry moved away from the lyricism of the early Romanceros and became a vehicle for experimental techniques through which he expressed tortured feelings of alienation and dislocation. Based on a new edition of the original text, Greg Simon's and Steven White's new translation brings to life Lorca's arresting imagery. Christopher Maurer, a leading authority on Lorca's work, provides an enlightening introduction placing Poet in New York in context, and there are translations of Lorca's letters as well as a lecture he gave about the work. Illustrated with archive photographs, this comprehensive volume will make Lorca's masterpiece available to a whole new generation of readers.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1990

  $3.73

  Written while Federico Garci a Lorca was a student at Columbia University in 1929-30, Poet in New York is one of the most important books Lorca produced, and certainly one of the most important books ever published about New York City. Indeed, it is a book that changed the direction of poetry in both Spain and the Americas, a pathbreaking and defining work of modern literature. In honor of the poet's centenary, the celebrated Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer has revised this strange, timeless, and vital book of verse, using much previously unavailable or untranslated material: Lorca's own manuscript of the entire book; witty and insightful letters from the poet to his family describing his feelings about America and his temporary home there (a dorm room in Columbia's John Jay Hall); the annotated photographs which accompany those letters; and a prose poem missing from previous editions. Complementing these new addtions are extensive notes and letters, revised versions of all the poems, and an interpretive lectures by Lorca himself. An excellent introduction to the work of one of the key figures of modern poetry, this bilingual edition of Poet in New York is also a thrilling exposition of the American city in the 20th century.