¡Bemsha SWING!

2 feb 2006

I can't get myself to choose Vallejo over Neruda, even though I wouldn't disagree with that choice. Neruda made some political and poetical missteps--Vallejo died young and was spared the fate of a long decline. Have they ever made a movie out of Vallejo's life?

I still prefer Residencia en la tierra to almost anything else in modern Spanish-language poetry.

Veinte poemas de amor is probably the most popular book of poetry in Latin America.

Both Vallejo and Neruda make Huidobro look a little superficial. Vallejo makes Neruda look too facile, too prolific. Yet the best pages of Neruda...

3 comentarios:

RC dijo...: I read Vallejo and Neruda in Spanish.Without relying on translations my favorite has to be Vallejo.; 11:52 p. m.
Ernesto dijo...: My favorite is Huidobro, though. Veinte poemas de amor (and la Canción desesperada is, indeed, the most popular poetry book in these latitudes because it is, to say it kindly, "facile". Residencia is way better (more complex, less corny, more "intellectual") and therefore less well-known.

Among poetry circles over here Neruda is a no-no. It took me a while to actually accept I liked some of his poems.; 10:49 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: I can't take Huidobro. I always thought his vanguardism was too generic and formulaic. Maybe it was the fault of the professor with whom I read him first.; 9:40 a. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

2 feb 2006

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