Gypsy Ballads

by Federico García Lorca

Genres: Poetry, Spain

Hardcover

Published April 1, 2012

About the author

Born in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Spain, June 5 1898; died near Granada, August 19 1936, García Lorca is one of Spain's most deeply appreciated and highly revered poets and dramatists. His murder by the Nationalists at the start of the Spanish civil war brought sudden international fame, accompanied by an excess of political rhetoric which led a later generation to question his merits; after the inevitable slump, his reputation has recovered (largely with a shift in interest to the less obvious works). He must now be bracketed with Machado as one of the two greatest poets Spain has produced in the 20th century, and he is certainly Spain's greatest dramatist since the Golden Age.

Reviews

[Jane Fudger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Federico Garcia Lorca is probably best known originally as a playwright until he travelled across Spain with the poet Ramon Menandez Pidal and came across the gypsy ballads which resulted in this collection of poetry
The book is bilingual with the poems both in Spanish and English.[I do think that the translation into English does lose some of the romance of the work].
Of the eighteen poemsin the collection my favourites are "Preciosa in the Air", "Sleepwalking Ballad" and "The Summoned One",
An interesting and evocative read with a good notes section included