Lorca/Blackburn Poems of Frederico Garcia Lorca

by Paul Blackburn

Poetry. Chosen and translated by Paul Blackburn. Drawings by Basil KingLatino/Latina Studies. "No modern Spanish Poet has so seduced the English-speaking world as Federico Garcia Lorca...At once daring and traditional, stark and explosive, his poetry seems to hold vast worlds of violence and sexuality in momentary, volatile equilibrium...Blackburn's translations catch this essential quality...full of the keen sense of words' sound and touch that characterized his own poetry. Blackburn...was one of the art's (translation) recent masters. In mingling his voice with Lorca's, he (Blackburn) has done us all a service" - David H. Rosenthal.

Genres: Poetry

50 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1979

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ai, what work it costs me,
wanting you like I want you!

All on account of your love
the air
hurts me —
my heart,
even my hat.

Who will buy it for me,
this hatband I'm holding,
and this sorrow of linen,
white to make handkerchiefs?

Ai! what work it costs me,
wanting you like I want you.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry is so beautiful- I wish I had known less about his life before I read the poems.. His demise haunted me when I was reading; it would stab at my heart sometimes that he was so in love with his culture, family, friends and country that he died protecting his basic human right. The edition I read has the spanish version side by side with the english interpretation. My tongue tripped over the words but it sounded so lyrical in my head. Beautiful poetry by a beautiful human being.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not rating Lorca's poems (which are breathtaking) but Blackburn's translations. The curse of having the originals in Spanish next to the translations is that you can see everywhere Blackburn falters, even if on the whole his translations are good. He made some strange choices here and there and there are a lot of lines I wish had been translated just slightly differently. That's why this is 3 stars for me.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes because I had heard good things about Blackburn's translations. However, most were disappointingly overwrought, sometimes out of touch with (what I understand as) Lorca's linguistics.

[Nikki Rossiter · Rating 2 out of 5]

i can tell these poems are soooooo good.
i must don’t know wtf blackburn was doing translating them like this. literally he’ll just make new line breaks and create entire stanzas that are not there when the original doesn’t necessitate it based on form.
lorca is really really good though!

[Dana Sweeney · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few really, really breathtaking poems here (skillfully translated into English from the original Spanish by Paul Blackburn). Lorca burned so brightly in his short life. As a queer reader encountering his work a century afterward, Lorca’s longing on the page struck a deep chord with me. “Es Verdad” and “Gacela of the Unexpected Love” are stunning contributions to the queer poetic canon.

“siempre, siempre: garden of my agony, / your fugitive body for — always”

The assuredness in his writing is incredible. There are also some really moving poems in here alluding to violence preceding the Spanish Civil War. He could convincingly carry that range — the personal, the political.

Really makes me eager to read and learn more about Lorca. A great place to start.

[d · Rating 5 out of 5]

No one knew you were martyring
a loving hummingbird between your teeth.

I found this at Profernalia being sold for 10 pesos and every day I am grateful for that serendipity. This is one of my favorite reads this year. Lorca's poetry sounds so deliciously lyrical in his native Spanish. The rhyming and structure were delicious to read. He tackles themes of love, loss, and the landscape through fairy-tale imagery saturated in the vivid citrus of a Granada sunset. Blackburn tempers this wild thing into a still-poignant but more mature tone. Overall, I enjoyed both experiences and savored this collection piece by piece. Lorca is astounding.

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful short collection of the great Spaniard's works. Deserving of critical attention, and closer critique of the translation process.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. Not bad. Some of the translation irked me a bit (I would have gone a different direction in a few cases), but overall it was pleasant, especially read aloud.