26 nov 2008

I saw all my blurbs for the first time today for this book:

“Apocryphal, American Lorca! Inviting us to consider how one culture reads another—how American poets read Spain through Lorca and Lorca through Spain—Jonathan Mayhew has given us an informative, thoughtful, fascinating, and often funny journey through translation, parody and kitsch. No one could be better qualified to study Lorca’s work as ‘generative device’ in English-language poetry and get at the mystery of how and what a poet can mean in a different cultural context.” --Christopher Maurer

“An intriguing and invaluable study of import of Spanish deep image poetry in its domestic American mode, foregrounding problems of authenticity, translation, and imitation—and the legacy of the Duende.” --Mary Ann Caws

“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 twentieth century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute.” --Marjorie Perloff

5 comentarios:

Unknown dijo...

Right on!

I see from UChicago Press that you have two books coming out in the *same month*. That's going to make for a pretty intense book tour!

John dijo...

Congrats!

I have to say, I've never seen "intriguing and invaluable" put together like that. "Captivating and priceless" -- sounds like Mozart!

Jake dijo...

Felicidades!

It must feel great to get such an enthusiastic review from a critic that you idolized during your scholastic development!

Gary dijo...

Jonathan! I am so superamount thrilled by this I can't even tell you.

Gotta get it ... gotta get it ... gotta get it ...

Thomas dijo...

I'm going to read this book just to see how it's done.