A newly revised edition of the insightful poetic cycle by one of the key figures of modern literature Written while Federico García Lorca was a student at Columbia University in 1929–30, Poet in New York is one of the most important books he produced, and certainly one of the most important books ever published about New York City. Indeed, it is a book that changed the direction of poetry in both Spain and the Americas, a pathbreaking and defining work of modern literature. Timed to coincide with the citywide celebration of García Lorca in New York planned for 2013, this edition, which has been revised once again by the renowned García Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer, includes thrilling material―new photographs, new and emended letters―that has only recently come to light. Complementing these additions are García Lorca's witty and insightful letters to his family describing his feelings about America and his temporary home there (a dorm room in Columbia's John Jay Hall), the annotated photographs that accompany those letters, a prose poem, extensive notes, and an interpretive lecture by García Lorca himself. An excellent introduction to the work of a key figure of modern poetry, this bilingual edition of Poet in New York , a strange, timeless, vital book of verse, is also an exposition of the American city in the twentieth century. “Lorca's testament may well be one of the greatest books of poems ever written about New York City . . . A wildly imaginative and joyously alienated declaration of residence.” ― The New Yorker Federico García Lorca, one of Spain’s greatest poets and dramatists, was born in a village near Granada in 1898 and was murdered in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Christopher Maurer , the editor of García Lorca's Selected Verse, Poet in New York, and other works, is the author of numerous books and articles on Spanish poetry. He is head of the Department of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Steven F. White is an independent historian residing in Frederick Maryland, USA. The recipient of two Fulbright awards and a research fellowship at European University Institute, he has taught at the University of Virginia, Averett University, the University of Perugia, Mount St. Mary's University and the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute. He has published widely on modern Italian social and political history, including Progressive Renaissance: America and the Reconstruction of Italian Education, 1943-1962 (1991). Poet in New York By Federico García Lorca Farrar, Straus and Giroux Copyright © 1988 Herederos de Federico García Lorca All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-374-53376-2 Contents Title Page, Copyright Notice, Dedication, Note to the Third Edition, Introduction by Christopher Maurer, I. POEMS OF SOLITUDE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, After a Walk, 1910 (Intermezzo), Fable of Three Friends to Be Sung in Rounds, Your Childhood in Menton, II. THE BLACKS, Standards and Paradise of the Blacks, The King of Harlem, Abandoned Church (Ballad of the Great War), III. STREETS AND DREAMS, Dance of Death, Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude (Dusk at Coney Island), Landscape of a Pissing Multitude (Battery Place Nocturne), Murder (Two Early Morning Voices on Riverside Drive), Christmas on the Hudson, Sleepless City (Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne), Blind Panorama of New York, The Birth of Christ, Dawn, IV. POEMS OF LAKE EDEN MILLS, Double Poem of Lake Eden, Living Sky, V. IN THE FARMER'S CABIN (IN THE NEWBURGH COUNTRYSIDE), Little Stanton, Cow, Little Girl Drowned in the Well (Granada and Newburgh), VI. INTRODUCTION TO DEATH (POEMS OF SOLITUDE IN VERMONT), Death, Nocturne of Emptied Space, Landscape with Two Graves and an Assyrian Dog, Ruin, Two Lovers Murdered by a Partridge, Moon and Panorama of the Insects (Love Poem), VII. RETURN TO THE CITY, New York (Office and Denunciation), Jewish Cemetery, Crucifixion, VIII. TWO ODES, Cry to Rome (From the Tower of the Chrysler Building), Ode to Walt Whitman, IX. FLIGHT FROM NEW YORK (TWO WALTZES TOWARD CIVILIZATION), Little Viennese Waltz, Waltz in the Branches, X. THE POET ARRIVES IN HAVANA, Blacks Dancing to Cuban Rhythms, Lecture: A Poet in New York, The Poet Writes to His Family from New York and Havana, Notes on the Poems, Notes, Works Cited, About the Author, Copyright, INTRODUCTION Federico García Lorca would remember his stay in New York (June 1929–March 1930) as "one of the most useful experiences" of his life, and in fact the year that he spent in New York, Vermont, and Havana changed his vision of himself and of his art. This was his first visit to another country, his first encounter with the racial and religious diversity of a democratic society (Spain had been ruled for almost six years by the dictator Primo de Rivera), and his first, frightening glimpse of urban crowds. The importance of