By Don Share
Miguel Hernández is, in addition to Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Federico García Lorca, one of many maximum Spanish poets of the 20th century. This quantity spans the complete of Hernández’s short writing existence, and contains his so much celebrated poems, from the early lyrics written in conventional varieties, resembling the relocating elegy Hernández wrote to his good friend and mentor Ramon Sijé (one of the main well-known elegies ever written within the Spanish language), to the non secular eroticism of his love poems, and the heart-wrenching, luminous traces written within the trenches of struggle. additionally integrated during this version are tributes to Hernández via Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda (interviewed via Robert Bly), Rafael Alberti, and Vicente Aleixandre. Pastoral nature, love, and warfare are ordinary topics in Hernández’s poetry, his phrases a stunning reminder that strength can by no means defeat spirit, that braveness is its personal gift.
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Extra resources for Miguel Hernandez (NYRB/Poets)
The brushstroke of a bloodstained foot fell over my wound, a planet of fired-up saffron fell, an enraged crimson cloud fell, a badly wounded ocean fell, a sky. I got here with the knife’s soreness, a knife was once ready whilst I came. They suckled me at the milk of the bitter-apple, the juice of a loopy, murderous blade, and while my eyes opened to the solar for the 1st time first thing I observed used to be a wound, and that used to be undesirable good fortune. shiny, ferocious flood, which shaped me, and chases me down. earlier than I even had a reputation my mom shoved me into this ravening land, threw me onto my ft, and onto my aspect, driven me more durable whenever, towards the grave. I struggle with blood, I argue with the pounding of our bodies, with all these veins, and every physique I stumble upon and cope with is another cauldron of blood, yet one more chain. notwithstanding they're gentle, barbs of soreness mount up like badges on my chest: That’s the place love of farming wounds me, and my deeply fallowed soul has furrowed my desire with untreatable wounds from the loss of life suffering of its plow. all of the implements lie in look forward to me: the hatchet has left mystery indicators for me, stones, wants, and days have excavated wellsprings inside of my physique that, through themselves, swallow up sand and depression. The chains get better whenever, the snakes get more suitable whenever, its energy is larger and crueler, the enveloping jewelry enhanced, enhanced the guts, my middle. In its vacuum-thick homestead— the single position those visitations happen— I hold a handful of letters and inscribed passions, a jot of blood, and dying. Ay, frothing blood, ay, roaring crimson climber, verdict in any respect hours resounding from underneath my head’s long-suffering anvil! Blood has given me start, and prison. Blood dissolves me and swells me up. i'm a development developed of blood and plaster that demolishes and rebuilds itself on a bone scaffolding. A bricklayer in blood, death blood, washes and hangs out his blouse on a daily basis now not faraway from my eye, and every evening, with my soul, or even with my eyelids, I assemble all of it again in. Blood blooms, spreads its extensive foliage in my chest, its brimming poplar grows wild and falls violently undone into numerous fierce rivers. by surprise I see that i'm drowning in its indignant torrents, and that i swim desperately opposed to them as though opposed to a deadly flow of daggers. the present drags me until eventually it's glutted, it tears me to items, sinks me, tramples me. I want i'll haul myself clear of its blows, hoist my palms out of it, draw the ache from my fingers. it is going to hand over dragging me to items, now that it ordains my existence, blood and its tide, our bodies, my bloody celebrity. i'll be one dilated wound, distended until eventually there's a corpse of froth: wind and not anything. i've got plenty of middle at the present time i'm, I don’t recognize, I don’t know the way, this present day i'm right here basically to endure, this day i've got no buddies, this day i've got in basic terms the will to tear my middle out via the roots and weigh down it less than my shoe. this present day that dry thorn is blossoming, this present day is an afternoon of crying in my nation, at the present time dejection unloads in my chest a dejected lead weight.