Customer Reviews

Selected Verse: Revised Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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