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A newly revised edition of the insightful poetic cycle by one of the key figures of modern literature
Written while Federico García Lorca was a student at Columbia University in 1929–30, Poet in New York is one of the most important books he produced, and certainly one of the most important books ever published about New York City. Indeed, it is a book that changed the direction of poetry in both Spain and the Americas, a pathbreaking and defining work of modern literature.
Timed to coincide with the citywide celebration of García Lorca in New York planned for 2013, this edition, which has been revised once again by the renowned García Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer, includes thrilling material—new photographs, new and emended letters—that has only recently come to light. Complementing these additions are García Lorca's witty and insightful letters to his family describing his feelings about America and his temporary home there (a dorm room in Columbia's John Jay Hall), the annotated photographs that accompany those letters, a prose poem, extensive notes, and an interpretive lecture by García Lorca himself.
An excellent introduction to the work of a key figure of modern poetry, this bilingual edition of Poet in New York, a strange, timeless, vital book of verse, is also an exposition of the American city in the twentieth century.
303 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1940
I want to cry because I feel like it
as the boys in the back row cry,
because I am not a man nor a poet nor a leaf
but a wounded pulse that probes the things of the other side.
All is broken in the night,
its legs spread wide over the terraces.
All is broken in the warm pipes
of a terrible, silent fountain.
Look at concrete shapes seeking their void.
Mistaken dogs and bitten apples.
Look at the longing, the anguish of a sad fossil world
that cannot find the accent of its first sob.