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Gypsy Ballads

byFederico García Lorca, Tyler Fisher (Translator)

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Heralded as one of the geniuses of twentieth-century literature, Federico García Lorca is among Spain’s most beloved poets and dramatists. Gypsy Ballads, his most influential collection of verses, fuses the traditional form of the Spanish ballad with startling imagery, metaphor and wit, showcasing his bold, experimental style. In these deeply political, dream-like poems, inspired by the rhythms, lore and struggles of the marginalised Roma people, Lorca has encapsulated the essence of Andalusia.

Now, for the very first time in the English language, the text has been translated in rhyming ballad metre, allowing readers to experience the extraordinary musicality and beauty of Lorca’s masterpiece.
There is no other poet like him in the history of poetry … Everyone who reads a poem of Lorca’s falls in love with him, and has a secret friend
Robert Bly

About Federico García Lorca

Poet, playwright, musician and artist, close friend of the great Surrealists Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró and Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca was one of the most distinctive and beloved writers of modern times. His writing has inspired generations of writers and artists, from Pablo Neruda to Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith.

Born in Andalusia, Spain, in 1898, Lorca studied in Madrid as a young man and soon became prominent in artistic circles; in 1928 his book of Gypsy Ballads catapulted him to literary stardom. He escaped to New York for a year in 1929, where he found he was able to focus on his poetry and immerse himself in the thriving gay culture of Harlem; upon returning to republican Spain he became increasingly politicized, devoting himself to radical works of theatre that rebelled against the bourgeois status quo.

Just after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he was murdered at Granada by Nationalist partisans. He was thirty-eight years old.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • ISBN: 9780241371879
  • Length: 112 pages
  • Price: £10.99
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