Poet in New York/Poeta En Nueva York (Paperback)

Newly translated for the first time in ten years, Federico Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York is an astonishing depiction of a tumultuous metropolis that changed the course of poetic expression in both Spain and the Americas. Written during Federico Garcia Lorca's nine months as a student at Columbia University at the beginning of the Great Depression, Poet in New York is widely considered one of the most important books Lorca ever produced. This enduring and influential collection offers us a New York City populated with poverty, racism, social turbulence, and solitude--a New York intoxicating in its vitality and devastating beauty. After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, poets Pablo Medina and Mark Statman returned to this seventy-year-old work and were struck by how closely it spoke to the atmosphere of New York after the World Trade Center crumbled. They were compelled to create a new English version of Poet in New York--translating the poems with reverence and irreverence, caution and wildness, humility and nerve. They translate Lorca's words with a contemporary poet's eye, which allows their work to uphold his surrealistic technique, mesmerizing complexity, and fierce emotion, unlike any other translation to date. An excellent introduction to one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century poetry, Poet in New York is a defining work of modern literature and this new bilingual edition is an exciting exposition of one American city that continues to have the ability to change our perspective on the world around us.