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Selected Verse: A Bilingual Edition
The work of Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet, has long been admired for its emotional intensity and metaphorical brilliance. Few poets take us more directly and memorably to what Lorca described as "the dark root of the scream," the terrain of the duende, where inspiration delivers a new poetic reality and "intelligence" discovers its limitations.
For many years, until the recent publication of FSG's Collected Poems, English readers' view of Lorca has been determined by a few well-known books- The Divan at Tamarit, Poet in New York, The Gypsy Ballads -and by a lamentably small number of poems. Now this Selected Verse, the most complete paperback anthology available in English, draws on FSG's two-volume Poetical Works, providing authoritative versions by outstanding poets and Francisco Aragon, Catherine Brown, Cola Franzen, Will Kirkland, William Bryant Logan, Jerome Rothernberge, Greg Simon, Alan S. Trueblood, John K. Walsh, and Steven F. White. In this bilingual edition, Lorca's poetic range comes clearly into view, from the playful Suites and stylized evocations of Andalusia to the utter gravity and mystery of the final elegies, confirming his stature as one of our century's finest poets.
For many years, until the recent publication of FSG's Collected Poems, English readers' view of Lorca has been determined by a few well-known books- The Divan at Tamarit, Poet in New York, The Gypsy Ballads -and by a lamentably small number of poems. Now this Selected Verse, the most complete paperback anthology available in English, draws on FSG's two-volume Poetical Works, providing authoritative versions by outstanding poets and Francisco Aragon, Catherine Brown, Cola Franzen, Will Kirkland, William Bryant Logan, Jerome Rothernberge, Greg Simon, Alan S. Trueblood, John K. Walsh, and Steven F. White. In this bilingual edition, Lorca's poetic range comes clearly into view, from the playful Suites and stylized evocations of Andalusia to the utter gravity and mystery of the final elegies, confirming his stature as one of our century's finest poets.
343 pages, Paperback
Published January 31, 1996
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About the author
Federico García Lorca
1,581 books3,096 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 - 30 of 31 reviews
April 11, 2022
Like concentric waves
on the water,
your words
in my heart.
Like a bird that collides
with the wind,
your kiss
on my lips.
Like open fountains
fronting the night,
my dark eyes
on your skin.
I'm caught
in your concentric
circles.
Like Saturn
I lug around
rings
from my dreams.
I'm not totally sunk,
I'm not rising.
My love!
June 22, 2017
What do you want from me, Dream,
that you won’t let me be?
*
At the rise of the moon
the sea overspreads the land
and the heart feels like an island
in the infinite.
*
Day, what a hard time I have
letting you leave.
you go off filled with me.
You return and don’t know me.
What a hard time I have
leaving in your bosom
possible concretions
of impossible minutes.
[…]
what a hard time I have
bearing you with your birds
and your windy arms.
*
But my love goes on seeking
pure madness of breeze and trill.
that you won’t let me be?
*
At the rise of the moon
the sea overspreads the land
and the heart feels like an island
in the infinite.
*
Day, what a hard time I have
letting you leave.
you go off filled with me.
You return and don’t know me.
What a hard time I have
leaving in your bosom
possible concretions
of impossible minutes.
[…]
what a hard time I have
bearing you with your birds
and your windy arms.
*
But my love goes on seeking
pure madness of breeze and trill.
November 27, 2007
the silence
listen, my child, to the silence.
an undulating silence,
a silence
that turns valleys and echoes slippery,
bends foreheads
toward the ground.
the six strings
the guitar
makes dreams weep.
the sobs of lost
souls
escape through its round
mouth.
and like the tarantula
it weaves a large star
to trap the sighs
floating in its black
wooden cistern.
listen, my child, to the silence.
an undulating silence,
a silence
that turns valleys and echoes slippery,
bends foreheads
toward the ground.
the six strings
the guitar
makes dreams weep.
the sobs of lost
souls
escape through its round
mouth.
and like the tarantula
it weaves a large star
to trap the sighs
floating in its black
wooden cistern.
February 15, 2008
Beautiful poetry. What else is there to say?
selections from his different stages of work and an excellent overview of his entire career. This book was constant go-to during my highschool years. i once read one of the Tamarit Divan poems in public in a church and blew myself away. I hadn't noticed its power until I got up there and started speaking with the rythmn he generated.
Magnificent.
I was led to "Poet In New York" (supposed to be an oxymoron- not so!) after this and wasn't dissapointed.
You can't go wrong with whatever you read of his next- truly made to do what he did and write what he wrote.
His plays are top-notch, too!
August 22, 2008
My favorite poem...
El remanso de aire
bajo la rama del eco.
El remanso del aguaa
bajo fronda de luceros.
El remanso de tu boca
bajo espesura de besos.
El remanso de aire
bajo la rama del eco.
El remanso del aguaa
bajo fronda de luceros.
El remanso de tu boca
bajo espesura de besos.
April 16, 2010
My first encounter with Lorca's poetry was as a Junior in high school while doing a research assignment for my Spanish 2 class. At the time i was only mildly interested in poetry and I certainly didn't know who Lorca was. After reading a few of his poems I fell in love with his work. He wrote the way I had always hoped to, and I went out the next week and bought a book of his poetry (this one). It is obvious that he sees the world in metaphor and that you as a reader are simply along for the 'dream'.
Read
August 2, 2011Truly a mystic, Federico Garcia Lorca is just one of the reasons that I can't get enough of 1920-1950's Spanish-language poetry. However the same thing that makes him a master-- his strange, bizarre imagery-- can also hold him back, forcing the reader to sludge through a mountain of poetic decoration and shroud. But the few gold nuggets that you run across in this book are filled with beauty and definitly worth the search.
April 29, 2018
Pretty incredible collection of poems. Lorca uses elements of nature particularly the moon which I absolutely loved. What made this book great is that the left hand was in Spanish and the right side pages were in translated English which made some of the English versions sound off. Being able to read the Spanish version made it clear why and I definitely recommend glancing over or even reading the Spanish in conjunction with the English to get the full effect of his poems.
August 23, 2008
i love when he goes to new york and goes absolutely mad!
June 6, 2018
Federico Garcia Lorca, on his birthday June 5
“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.”
― Federico García Lorca
Poems charged with dark energies, dreams, mysteries, a strange and personal symbolism, a guerrilla theatre of resistence, songs of death and tragic passion, and all beautifully written, an aesthetics of surrender to the abyss of oneself; Federico García Lorca unlocked the door of our world and signaled a way of escape from our prison.
As a poet and musician he is foremost a lyricist of the Flamenco music of Andalusian gypsies, transforming the traditional folk music of outcasts and peasants into what is now celebrated as the national music of Spain; he gave voice to the peoples' songs of suffering, tragic love, and death, the passion and anguish of the guitar. That the guitar has become the primary instrument of popular music owes some debt to Federico García Lorca.
Poet in New York and Season in Granada, and the revised translations in Selected Verse, all studies of the great Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer, collect the relevant poems and prose, and together provide a great overview of his work. Though it is his third art, drama, and the great achievement of The House Of Bernarda Alba, that got him killed on Franco's orders, and for which he is revered as a hero and martyr in the cause of freedom.
In Search of Duende, his 1933 Buenos Aires lectures in support of his direction of the premiere of Blood Wedding, describe his ars poetica as beginning where the limits of reason end, and to me sound very Jungian. Rereading it a few days ago I kept referencing James Hillman's book on Pan and the Nightmare. If Surrealism is an artistic experiment in immersion in dreams and the collective unconscoius, Lorca is clearly among them.
Of his plays, my favorite is of course the fantastic Surrealist work written for his friend and unrequited love Salvador Dali, When Five Years Pass. As a love letter, it certainly has the virtue of being unique.
Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca chronicle this relationship, also the subject of the film Little Ashes. I have always thought Saint Sebastian represents what is most noble and truly beautiful in our humanity.
Do read the marvelous and strange novel in which he is cast as the main character, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell by Carlos Rojas.
Then there are the three tragedies of rural Spain for which he is celebrated; Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba.
Blood Wedding, depicting a vendetta among rival gypsy clans of Andalusia, the first of his innovating and masterful dramatic trilogy on Spanish historical culture and character, an exquisitely wrought theatre of tragic passion and poetic force.
Yerma is a fable of disempowered feminine nature and the struggle for self-ownership against social control, in which a woman's infertility echoes that of the land under a despotic patriarchy.
But it is The House Of Bernarda Alba which will live forever as an incontestable masterpiece, a song of freedom from the depths of Franco's tyrannical prison-state, resonant with the hope of liberty, a magnificent play wherein we the audience are the liberty bell which is struck, ringing. And this sound gathers force as it spreads outward, across gulfs of time and place to bear the message on.
“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.”
― Federico García Lorca
Poems charged with dark energies, dreams, mysteries, a strange and personal symbolism, a guerrilla theatre of resistence, songs of death and tragic passion, and all beautifully written, an aesthetics of surrender to the abyss of oneself; Federico García Lorca unlocked the door of our world and signaled a way of escape from our prison.
As a poet and musician he is foremost a lyricist of the Flamenco music of Andalusian gypsies, transforming the traditional folk music of outcasts and peasants into what is now celebrated as the national music of Spain; he gave voice to the peoples' songs of suffering, tragic love, and death, the passion and anguish of the guitar. That the guitar has become the primary instrument of popular music owes some debt to Federico García Lorca.
Poet in New York and Season in Granada, and the revised translations in Selected Verse, all studies of the great Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer, collect the relevant poems and prose, and together provide a great overview of his work. Though it is his third art, drama, and the great achievement of The House Of Bernarda Alba, that got him killed on Franco's orders, and for which he is revered as a hero and martyr in the cause of freedom.
In Search of Duende, his 1933 Buenos Aires lectures in support of his direction of the premiere of Blood Wedding, describe his ars poetica as beginning where the limits of reason end, and to me sound very Jungian. Rereading it a few days ago I kept referencing James Hillman's book on Pan and the Nightmare. If Surrealism is an artistic experiment in immersion in dreams and the collective unconscoius, Lorca is clearly among them.
Of his plays, my favorite is of course the fantastic Surrealist work written for his friend and unrequited love Salvador Dali, When Five Years Pass. As a love letter, it certainly has the virtue of being unique.
Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca chronicle this relationship, also the subject of the film Little Ashes. I have always thought Saint Sebastian represents what is most noble and truly beautiful in our humanity.
Do read the marvelous and strange novel in which he is cast as the main character, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell by Carlos Rojas.
Then there are the three tragedies of rural Spain for which he is celebrated; Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba.
Blood Wedding, depicting a vendetta among rival gypsy clans of Andalusia, the first of his innovating and masterful dramatic trilogy on Spanish historical culture and character, an exquisitely wrought theatre of tragic passion and poetic force.
Yerma is a fable of disempowered feminine nature and the struggle for self-ownership against social control, in which a woman's infertility echoes that of the land under a despotic patriarchy.
But it is The House Of Bernarda Alba which will live forever as an incontestable masterpiece, a song of freedom from the depths of Franco's tyrannical prison-state, resonant with the hope of liberty, a magnificent play wherein we the audience are the liberty bell which is struck, ringing. And this sound gathers force as it spreads outward, across gulfs of time and place to bear the message on.
June 22, 2018
A movie re Mr Lorca’s life (Death in Granada) got me to read his poetry .... Andy Garcia btw gave an excellent (partial) reading of the “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias” .... and led me to conclude that like Shakespeare’s plays some literature must be heard outloud. And so i digress - but it is why I began to read Lorca’s work (Hey, any port in a storm....). The poems are amazing. I don’t pretend to appreciate it all, but WOW! It has been 25 years or so, and i still reread Engravings of the Garden, or even better, Madrigals. Obviously there are riches in the work, and like all good poetry, it can lead one, or help to reveal one to one’s self.
May 13, 2016
La Virgen y San José
perdieron sus castañuelas,
y buscan a los gitanos
para ver si las encuentran.
La Virgen viene vestida
con un traje de alcaldesa
de papel de chocolate
con los collares de almendras.
San José mueve los brazos
bajo una capa de seda.
Detrás va Pedro Domecq
con tres sultanes de Persia.
La media luna soñaba
un éxtasis de cigueña.
Estandartes y faroles
invaden las azotea.
Por los espejos sollozan
bailarinas sin caderas.
Agua y sombra, sombra y agua
por Jerez de la Frontera.
perdieron sus castañuelas,
y buscan a los gitanos
para ver si las encuentran.
La Virgen viene vestida
con un traje de alcaldesa
de papel de chocolate
con los collares de almendras.
San José mueve los brazos
bajo una capa de seda.
Detrás va Pedro Domecq
con tres sultanes de Persia.
La media luna soñaba
un éxtasis de cigueña.
Estandartes y faroles
invaden las azotea.
Por los espejos sollozan
bailarinas sin caderas.
Agua y sombra, sombra y agua
por Jerez de la Frontera.
February 18, 2010
Beautiful.
Just beautiful.
I like that this version captures poetry from several eras of Lorca's career, rather than just the Andalusian or New York years.
Just beautiful.
I like that this version captures poetry from several eras of Lorca's career, rather than just the Andalusian or New York years.
June 20, 2010
One of my favorite poets. His metaphors make my jaw slacken, and my mind wish, wish, wish they had dripped from my pen.
September 28, 2010
Canciones are some of my favorite poems of Lorca's but all time favorite is Romance sonambulo (Best translation is not actually in the book but is "Walking Asleep" translated by Rolfe Humphries)
March 11, 2012
Did not care for the English translations. I found them to be not quite in the proper spirit of the Spanish; however, this is not say that they were incorrect. I simply found them not on point.
June 18, 2012
Because all things must eventually return to the library.
Someday I will just cave and buy a copy for myself.
Someday I will just cave and buy a copy for myself.
January 18, 2013
Excellent
February 3, 2013
Federico Garcia Lorca is an incredible poet and playwright. His life is transferred to his literary works; so much drama, pain, and unrequited love.
September 20, 2014
Some of the works selected are good... others I would had selected different ones. As far as the English translation... I'll stick to the original work.
July 7, 2014
Great use of figurative language and metaphor. Panoramic word choice. Must-read for any aspiring writer or poet. The Spanish on the opposite page is more than convenient.
November 15, 2015
An amazing gay poet! There's at least one poem in here for the down trodden queer youth
July 5, 2025
Let my heart be a cicada
over heavenly fields.
Let it die singing slow,
wounded by the blue sky.
-- "Cicada!"
Atop deathless narcissuses
the white satyr slept.
Huge horns made of crystal
virginized his deep brows.
The sun, a tamed dragon,
licked his ladylike hands.
On the river of love
dead nymphs drifted by.
The satyr's heart in the wind
dried out from old storms.
The flute on the ground
was a fountain,
it had seven blue tubes
cut in glass.
-- "White Satyr"
Oh what cold perfumes
what hyacinths!
What maiden who comes
through white cypresses.
Carries her two severed breasts
on a platter of gold.
(Two highways.
Her very long train
& the Milky Way.)
-- "White Smell"
The dead maiden
in the shell of the bed,
stripped of blossom and breeze,
ascended in unending light.
The world was left behind,
a lily of cotton and shadow,
watching through the panes
the infinite passage.
-- "Venus"
Because roses search the forehead
for a hard landscape of bone,
and human hands have no more sense
than to mimic roots beneath the soil.
-- "Ghazal of the Flight"
The rose
was not looking for the dawn:
almost eternal on its stem,
it looked for something else.
The rose
was not looking for science or shadow:
confine of flesh and of dream,
it looked for something else.
The rose
was not looking for the rose.
Through the sky, immobile,
it looked for something else.
-- "Qasida of the Rose"
over heavenly fields.
Let it die singing slow,
wounded by the blue sky.
-- "Cicada!"
Atop deathless narcissuses
the white satyr slept.
Huge horns made of crystal
virginized his deep brows.
The sun, a tamed dragon,
licked his ladylike hands.
On the river of love
dead nymphs drifted by.
The satyr's heart in the wind
dried out from old storms.
The flute on the ground
was a fountain,
it had seven blue tubes
cut in glass.
-- "White Satyr"
Oh what cold perfumes
what hyacinths!
What maiden who comes
through white cypresses.
Carries her two severed breasts
on a platter of gold.
(Two highways.
Her very long train
& the Milky Way.)
-- "White Smell"
The dead maiden
in the shell of the bed,
stripped of blossom and breeze,
ascended in unending light.
The world was left behind,
a lily of cotton and shadow,
watching through the panes
the infinite passage.
-- "Venus"
Because roses search the forehead
for a hard landscape of bone,
and human hands have no more sense
than to mimic roots beneath the soil.
-- "Ghazal of the Flight"
The rose
was not looking for the dawn:
almost eternal on its stem,
it looked for something else.
The rose
was not looking for science or shadow:
confine of flesh and of dream,
it looked for something else.
The rose
was not looking for the rose.
Through the sky, immobile,
it looked for something else.
-- "Qasida of the Rose"
January 21, 2022
"Cantar que vaya al alma de las cosas
y al alma de los vientos
y que descanse al fin en la alegría
del corazón eterno.
A song to go to the soul of things
and to the soul of the winds,
resting at last in the bliss
of the eternal heart."
y al alma de los vientos
y que descanse al fin en la alegría
del corazón eterno.
A song to go to the soul of things
and to the soul of the winds,
resting at last in the bliss
of the eternal heart."
June 28, 2020
Read Lorca now. Stop what you're doing and read Lorca.
October 11, 2021
One of my favorite poets Ive read to date.
January 23, 2022
There were very few pieces that spoke to me in this collection. The ones that did were amazing. But overall, it was a long slog.
December 31, 2024
These aren’t my like favorite favorite translations BUT Lorca is a genius.
January 29, 2025
verde que te quiero verde / verde viento. verdes ramas.
July 20, 2023
I did like reading both the Spanish and English. It was delightful to read them to each other at the Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews