ABSTRACT

In the Spanish-speaking world, Federico Garcia Lorca is universally granted the onerous stature of major poet—and with good cause. Spanish poetry does not translate, and the recent translation of the complete Poet in New York is evidence once more that Lorca's response to the city reaches beyond the borders of possibility in English. Lorca intended for a time to publish two books, not one, while he continued to work on the texts for the remainder of his life. That tangled history matters, for it indicates the lack of cohesion in the whole. The emphasis on Lorca's impressive musical ability is welcome and pertinent to poets' reading of the verse. At the same time his piano-playing and recitations of his own verse shows Lorca as a ham entertainer and a manipulator of friends and acquaintances. Robert Bly reads Lorca's early poems as imitations of Jimenez's diction and manner; Morris sees influence but not imitation.