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Suites

Federico García Lorca

Translated from the Spanish with a Preface by Jerome Rothenberg

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One of the great Spanish poets and playwrights of the 20th century, Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) was born in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada. He was murdered by Francisco Franco’s soldiers in 1936.

Suites may be the most charming and melodious of all his poem series. Written early in his career, most of these poems remained unpublished during his lifetime and were later reassembled from notebooks. The first appearance of this work in English was in the Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), and in a small chapbook titled Suites (Sun & Moon, 1989). This is the first complete single-volume edition.

Jerome Rothenberg (1931–2024) was an internationally known author of over 60 volumes of poetry, among them Gematria (Sun & Moon, 1993). He co­edited the anthology Poems for the Millennium (University of California Press, 1995).

"Madrigal"

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.

Book Review(s)

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, p. 79

by Anonymous

Some exclamatory and heartfelt, others mordant, whimsical or surreal, the pieces in Suites by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) are early, short-lined poetic sequences, here translated by the prolific Jerome Rothenberg. "In the little woodlets / with their purples & magnesiums / the princesitas jumping /are baby sparkadillos." Many of these component poems and verses by Spain's master have never before appeared in English.

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