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Lorca & Jimenez: Selected Poems
A unique gathering of poems by two great twentieth-century poets, with the original Spanish versions and powerful English translations on facing pages. In a new preface, editor and translator Robert Bly explores what the poems reveal today about politics, the spirit, and the purpose of art.
208 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 1997
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About the author
Federico García Lorca
1,581 books3,081 followersBorn 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.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 9, 2016
There is a whole world of crushed rivers and unachievable
distances (Federico García Lorca)
*
But two has never been a number-
because it’s only an anguish and its shadow,
it’s only a guitar where love feels how hopeless it is,
it’s the proof of someone else’s infinity, (Federico García Lorca)
*
Memories, that one night,
suddenly, come alive,
like a rose in the desert,
like a star at noon,
-the stronger burning in this cold nothingness-
landmarks of the best
life a man has,
which is hardly lived at all!
Path dry
day after day;
then the miracle, suddenly,
an amazing springtime,
memories returned from the past! (Juan Ramón Jiménez)
distances (Federico García Lorca)
*
But two has never been a number-
because it’s only an anguish and its shadow,
it’s only a guitar where love feels how hopeless it is,
it’s the proof of someone else’s infinity, (Federico García Lorca)
*
Memories, that one night,
suddenly, come alive,
like a rose in the desert,
like a star at noon,
-the stronger burning in this cold nothingness-
landmarks of the best
life a man has,
which is hardly lived at all!
Path dry
day after day;
then the miracle, suddenly,
an amazing springtime,
memories returned from the past! (Juan Ramón Jiménez)
January 26, 2025
Fantastic poetry, and I enjoyed reading the author's input during the introductions to the poets. I will say the translation format was a bit shaky on the kindle, but nothing unmanageable.
Read
January 3, 2012Lorca & Jiminez: Selected poems; chosen and translated by Robert Bly
A selection of poems from two reputed Spanish poets. All the poems are presented with the Spanish on the right-hand side of the page and the English translation on the left.
From Juan Ramon Jimenez there are poems from his ‘Early Poems’; Diary of a poet recently married; and ‘Later Poems’. Maybe I was just not in the right mood, but for me too many of the poems were love poems and it did not slip away from the infatuated mode to selfhood (where it would be more interesting for me) too well. I realise this is put badly, his love poems are not syryppy at all, there is quite a picturesque quality to it. A garden with a sweet young woman in tears. Most interesting to read the diary section – which includes poems on New York and Walt Whitman, with other Spanish poets’ New York poems.
The most beautiful poem for me remains the one that I knew of Jimenez from before:
Oceans
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing... Silence... Waves...
-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
Juan Ramon Jimenez
(translated from Spanish)
Of Frederico Garcia Lorca there are poems from ‘Early poems; Romancero Gitano; Poeta en Nueva York; and Divan Del Tamarit. Some New York poems as well, that is. I enjoyed this section more, though it is hard to say anything about Lorca’s poetry – it seems playful and sad at once. It seems to access experiece and dreams in a strange way, and for me when I try to ‘explain’ the poem in any way it seems to drift away. Any of his poems. Of course that may be true about explaining poetry or art in any case, so maybe I mean more something like I have to read Lorca like listening to music.
Here is a poem by him as well:
THE BOY UNABLE TO SPEAK
The small boy is looking for his voice.
(The King of the Crickets had it.)
The boy was looking
in a drop of water for his voice.
I don’t want the voice to speak with;
I will make a ring from it
that my silence will wear
on its little finger.
The small boy was looking
in a drop of water for his voice.
(Far away the captured voice
was getting dressed up like a cricket.)
Frederico Garcia Lorca, translated by Robert Bly
There is a short introduction to each poet’s work and a recollection of Jimenez by Rafael Alberti.
A selection of poems from two reputed Spanish poets. All the poems are presented with the Spanish on the right-hand side of the page and the English translation on the left.
From Juan Ramon Jimenez there are poems from his ‘Early Poems’; Diary of a poet recently married; and ‘Later Poems’. Maybe I was just not in the right mood, but for me too many of the poems were love poems and it did not slip away from the infatuated mode to selfhood (where it would be more interesting for me) too well. I realise this is put badly, his love poems are not syryppy at all, there is quite a picturesque quality to it. A garden with a sweet young woman in tears. Most interesting to read the diary section – which includes poems on New York and Walt Whitman, with other Spanish poets’ New York poems.
The most beautiful poem for me remains the one that I knew of Jimenez from before:
Oceans
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing... Silence... Waves...
-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
Juan Ramon Jimenez
(translated from Spanish)
Of Frederico Garcia Lorca there are poems from ‘Early poems; Romancero Gitano; Poeta en Nueva York; and Divan Del Tamarit. Some New York poems as well, that is. I enjoyed this section more, though it is hard to say anything about Lorca’s poetry – it seems playful and sad at once. It seems to access experiece and dreams in a strange way, and for me when I try to ‘explain’ the poem in any way it seems to drift away. Any of his poems. Of course that may be true about explaining poetry or art in any case, so maybe I mean more something like I have to read Lorca like listening to music.
Here is a poem by him as well:
THE BOY UNABLE TO SPEAK
The small boy is looking for his voice.
(The King of the Crickets had it.)
The boy was looking
in a drop of water for his voice.
I don’t want the voice to speak with;
I will make a ring from it
that my silence will wear
on its little finger.
The small boy was looking
in a drop of water for his voice.
(Far away the captured voice
was getting dressed up like a cricket.)
Frederico Garcia Lorca, translated by Robert Bly
There is a short introduction to each poet’s work and a recollection of Jimenez by Rafael Alberti.
February 9, 2008
Not so keen on Bly's translations, but at least he had the good sense to do the facing-page originals...
January 4, 2010
I wanted to like it more than I did, but still excellent.
September 14, 2013
Some great lines in here. Some were quite light, while others were haunting.
Read
May 26, 2015Read my review of this & other books at http://miscmss.blogspot.com/2015/05/f...
April 11, 2023
Lorca finally comes alive in these translations. I didn't like the other collection of his I read.
Jimenez lines I liked:
"I told her I was going to kiss her;
she lowered her eyes calmly
and offered her cheeks to me
like someone losing a treasure."
"What was it like, God of mine, what was it like?
-Oh unfaithful heart, indecisive intelligence!
Was it like the going by of the wind?
Like the disappearance of the spring?
As nimble, as changeable, as weightless
as milkweed seeds in summer...Yes! Indefinite
as a smile which is lost forever in a laugh...
Arrogant in the air, just like a flag!"
"Like the light from a star,
like a voice we cannot identify
in a dream, like the galloping
of some rider far off
which we listen to, holding our breath,
our ear touching the ground,
like the sea over the telephone..."
"Now the night makes the living who are asleep a little higher up, parallel with the dead who are asleep a little lower down, a little time that is past and a little time to come. Parallel rows toward a neighbourly infinity."
"The ship, slow and rushing at the same time, can
get ahead of the water
but not the sky."
"Intelligence, give me
the exact name of things!
...I want my word to be
the thing itself,
created by my soul a second time."
"Even though my soul fits so wonderfully
inside my body-
like a clear idea
in a line perfect for it-
nevertheless it has to abandon the body
eventually, leaving it like some academic's line,
hollow and stiff!"
"Like an immortal water,
going in and out of everything.
Are you going around naked
in the air?
The basil is not asleep,
the ant is busy.
Are you going around naked
in the house?"
Lorca I liked:
"My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those mountains,
farther than the oceans,
way up near the stars..."
"A parliament of grasshoppers is in the field.
What do you say, Marcus Aurelius,
about these old philosophers of the prairie?"
"The color white is walking
over a silent carpet
made of the feathers of a dove."
"Juan Antonio from Montilla
rolls dead down the hill,
his body covered with lilies,
a pomegranate on his temples.
He is riding now on the cross of fire,
on the highway of death."
"Dusk that the fig trees and the
hot whispers have made hysterical
faints and falls on the bloody
thighs of the riders,
and black angels went on flying
through the failing light,
angels with long hair,
and hearts of olive-oil."
"Assassinated by the sky,
between the forms that are moving toward the serpent,
and the forms that are moving towards the crystal
I'll let my hair fall down.
With the tree of amputated limbs that does not sing,
and the boy of the white face of an egg."
"I had a son who was a giant,
but the dead are stronger and know how to gobble down pieces
of the sky."
"While the Chinaman was crying on the roof
without finding the nakedness of his wife,
and the bank president was watching the pressure-gauge
that measures the remorseless silence of money,
the black mask was arriving at Wall Street."
"I was on the terrace fighting with the moon.
Swarms of windows were stinging one of the night's thighs.
...A drop of blood was looking for the light at the yolk of
the star
in order to imitate the dead seed of an apple."
"In the graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet."
"and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders."
"No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight..."
"What shall I do, set my landscapes in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won't attack; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley..."
"I can see the night in its duel, wounded
and wrestling, tangled with noon."
"I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries...
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all
its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges
for...
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century...
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me..."
Jimenez lines I liked:
"I told her I was going to kiss her;
she lowered her eyes calmly
and offered her cheeks to me
like someone losing a treasure."
"What was it like, God of mine, what was it like?
-Oh unfaithful heart, indecisive intelligence!
Was it like the going by of the wind?
Like the disappearance of the spring?
As nimble, as changeable, as weightless
as milkweed seeds in summer...Yes! Indefinite
as a smile which is lost forever in a laugh...
Arrogant in the air, just like a flag!"
"Like the light from a star,
like a voice we cannot identify
in a dream, like the galloping
of some rider far off
which we listen to, holding our breath,
our ear touching the ground,
like the sea over the telephone..."
"Now the night makes the living who are asleep a little higher up, parallel with the dead who are asleep a little lower down, a little time that is past and a little time to come. Parallel rows toward a neighbourly infinity."
"The ship, slow and rushing at the same time, can
get ahead of the water
but not the sky."
"Intelligence, give me
the exact name of things!
...I want my word to be
the thing itself,
created by my soul a second time."
"Even though my soul fits so wonderfully
inside my body-
like a clear idea
in a line perfect for it-
nevertheless it has to abandon the body
eventually, leaving it like some academic's line,
hollow and stiff!"
"Like an immortal water,
going in and out of everything.
Are you going around naked
in the air?
The basil is not asleep,
the ant is busy.
Are you going around naked
in the house?"
Lorca I liked:
"My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those mountains,
farther than the oceans,
way up near the stars..."
"A parliament of grasshoppers is in the field.
What do you say, Marcus Aurelius,
about these old philosophers of the prairie?"
"The color white is walking
over a silent carpet
made of the feathers of a dove."
"Juan Antonio from Montilla
rolls dead down the hill,
his body covered with lilies,
a pomegranate on his temples.
He is riding now on the cross of fire,
on the highway of death."
"Dusk that the fig trees and the
hot whispers have made hysterical
faints and falls on the bloody
thighs of the riders,
and black angels went on flying
through the failing light,
angels with long hair,
and hearts of olive-oil."
"Assassinated by the sky,
between the forms that are moving toward the serpent,
and the forms that are moving towards the crystal
I'll let my hair fall down.
With the tree of amputated limbs that does not sing,
and the boy of the white face of an egg."
"I had a son who was a giant,
but the dead are stronger and know how to gobble down pieces
of the sky."
"While the Chinaman was crying on the roof
without finding the nakedness of his wife,
and the bank president was watching the pressure-gauge
that measures the remorseless silence of money,
the black mask was arriving at Wall Street."
"I was on the terrace fighting with the moon.
Swarms of windows were stinging one of the night's thighs.
...A drop of blood was looking for the light at the yolk of
the star
in order to imitate the dead seed of an apple."
"In the graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet."
"and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders."
"No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight..."
"What shall I do, set my landscapes in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won't attack; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley..."
"I can see the night in its duel, wounded
and wrestling, tangled with noon."
"I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries...
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all
its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges
for...
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century...
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me..."
March 1, 2021
I bought this collection for Lorca and discovered (forgive my ignorance) Jiménez whom, if it's even fair to draw a comparison between the two, I ended up falling in love with MORE. His language in his descriptions of love and the natural land is elegant and quietly restorative. Lorca is dynamic and incisive. As Bly notes, Lorca was influenced by and benefited from Jiménez, as the earlier works reflect, and it was fun to read these selected works paired together with the English translations next to the original Spanish. It's always delightful to see how these poems live in different languages.
November 6, 2023
Such a great, illuminating collection - you learn so much about Lorca via Jiménez, and vice versa. Bly's translations are often outstanding, and at times I'd argue they're better than the originals (!), but he makes several unfortunate choices, too, particularly with Lorca, which is a real shame.
September 2, 2024
I agree Bly may have messed this one up not sure, but it reads flat to me and I enjoyed the Jimenez more than Lorca but then read a different translation of Lorca The Tamarit poems and THAT was stellar.
January 1, 2020
Los poemas de Lorca y Jimenez te transportan a un mundo de fantasia exotica.
July 26, 2021
A delight to witness masters at work.
June 26, 2022
Poetry sometimes has its challenges; translated poetry is even more obtuse. I read this book for Lorca but ended up more inspired by Jiménez. A short read and a worthy effort.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews