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"Lorca's long out-of-print poetic sequence about New York City, newly translated in this bilingual edition, is as contemporary as today's headlines: slums, racism, violence, and cries of loneliness punctuate this verse. Written during the Spanish playwright's nine-month stopover in 1929-30, and steeped in surrealistic technique, [this] unrelentingly negative antihymn reads the urban condition as symbolic of our culture's materialistic corruption of love and its degradation of nature . . . This [edition] is accompanied by Lorca's letters and a lecture he delivered on this lyrical work."—"Publishers Weekly "
"[This] is one of the perplexing classics of 20th-century poetry. It is a difficult, sometimes bewildered, often hermetic work. It is elusive and enigmatic, mysterious, tortured—a book, to borrow one of the poet's own phrases, 'that can baptize in dark water all who look at it.' Reading it in [this] convincing new translation . . . one feels the anguished authority an
"[This] is one of the perplexing classics of 20th-century poetry. It is a difficult, sometimes bewildered, often hermetic work. It is elusive and enigmatic, mysterious, tortured—a book, to borrow one of the poet's own phrases, 'that can baptize in dark water all who look at it.' Reading it in [this] convincing new translation . . . one feels the anguished authority an
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'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.
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First Sentence
Asesinado por el cielo. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Asesinado por el cielo. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Only for the fact that I can receive these kind of books in Kosovo is something I will aver be grateful to Amazon for.
About the book itself: As a Spanyard I have to say I already read this poetry book several times; Although this is very much personal, as you may know it is probably among the highest standards ever reached by poetry in Spanish.
What I was expecting with the book is a good quality translation (it was for a present to a friend who only speaks English...) and this I definitely got!
Feelings are difficult to translate, poetry is basically impossible... but this translation focuses much more on the feelings of the Poet in his trip to New York than in the perfect rime or rithm... and that I really do appreciate.
My friend is already enjoying the book.
Thanks a lot.
A.
About the book itself: As a Spanyard I have to say I already read this poetry book several times; Although this is very much personal, as you may know it is probably among the highest standards ever reached by poetry in Spanish.
What I was expecting with the book is a good quality translation (it was for a present to a friend who only speaks English...) and this I definitely got!
Feelings are difficult to translate, poetry is basically impossible... but this translation focuses much more on the feelings of the Poet in his trip to New York than in the perfect rime or rithm... and that I really do appreciate.
My friend is already enjoying the book.
Thanks a lot.
A.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had to buy this book for my university course and although I had never heard of Federico before commencing the module, by the time I had read these poems I was totally engrossed with his life in general. Although the poems can be very bizarre and generally undecipherable, some of them reveal a lot about his tortured life as a gay man under the rule of Franco. Some of the poems are very beautiful and are full of morality. All I can say is that I am very glad I chose that university module because otherwise I would never have learnt about this great poet.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
One of the most complex and rich books of Lorca
1 Jan 1998
Format:Paperback
Federico García Lorca is among the most celebrated Spanish poets of all time. The beauty of his writing has given him a place in the gallery of the best Spanish writers. This book he wrote when he was a student at Columbia University relies on the influence he got from the surrealistic movements that were running on Europe at the time. Thus, it gets far from the poetic language used in his other books, most notably in Romancero Gitano: verses leave the regularity of the romance to explore new and rich arrangements; the metaphors grow more complex and ellaborate, making a delicious challenge to the reader; one can read a poem time and again for days and will still be unsure of its real meaning. Besides this some of the poems reach a new height on Lorca's poetry. To anybody just seeking to discover Lorca and his world, Romancero Gitano seems to be a best approach in my oppinion, but if you know it and like it, I can't help recommending Poet in New York as a new horizon to discover. If your approach to this book is open-minded, you won't be disappointed.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Translators too desperate to make Lorca comprehensible
22 Jun 2009
Format:Paperback
Fredrico Garcia Lorca did no wrong with Poet in New York, it is the translators who do him wrong in this edition. Desperate to make Lorca's abstract and haunting images accessible, Simon and White lose the poetic element in Lorca's writing. Not to mention the translation is not even literal. (i.e. "Carne" is translated "skin" instead of "flesh," or "meat." "Asesinado" is translated "cut down" instead of "murdered.") So what we end up with is a vain attempt to make Lorca more easily understood--a task which insults the intelligence of the reader and the creativity of the poet--which in turn results in a loose translation that reads too much like prose with line breaks. If you are looking to buy Poet in New York, do yourself a favor and buy the Medina and Statman translation. It is much truer to the spirit of the original, as well as the language.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
powerful and chilling account....
26 Nov 2004
Format:Paperback
After reading "A Poet in New York," I can say this much:
"I don't think I am planning a trip to New York very soon." Lorca's account of the city was so visceral, raw and cruel, I could feel the hauntingly dead interactions between people, and those people's relationships to the material world around them. The accounts of violence in the streets are equally as cold and boldly unapologetic as his observations of the early morning hours when the city is first waking up.
Gabriel Garcia Lorca truly shows that when it comes to the movements as a city with ties to industry, capitalistic gain and material wealth, there is no division between the life of the human being and the life of the machine. There is almost an automated, "conveyor belt" feeling to the mechanical movement of life in the city. As soon as energy is poured into an endeavor, it is also poured out just as easily. People are as disposable as sheet metal. Their blood, their organs and their instruments of movement could be ripped away and demolished as quickly and non-emotionally as one would destroy the framework of a building and it would be of no concern to anyone else.
I believe that Lorca's observations and journal entries are a reflection of not only the mindset of one of the most well known cities in the world, applicable to the 1930s, but is also quite accurately a reflection of the state of the world today.
"I don't think I am planning a trip to New York very soon." Lorca's account of the city was so visceral, raw and cruel, I could feel the hauntingly dead interactions between people, and those people's relationships to the material world around them. The accounts of violence in the streets are equally as cold and boldly unapologetic as his observations of the early morning hours when the city is first waking up.
Gabriel Garcia Lorca truly shows that when it comes to the movements as a city with ties to industry, capitalistic gain and material wealth, there is no division between the life of the human being and the life of the machine. There is almost an automated, "conveyor belt" feeling to the mechanical movement of life in the city. As soon as energy is poured into an endeavor, it is also poured out just as easily. People are as disposable as sheet metal. Their blood, their organs and their instruments of movement could be ripped away and demolished as quickly and non-emotionally as one would destroy the framework of a building and it would be of no concern to anyone else.
I believe that Lorca's observations and journal entries are a reflection of not only the mindset of one of the most well known cities in the world, applicable to the 1930s, but is also quite accurately a reflection of the state of the world today.
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