The passionate life and violent death of Federico Garcia Lorca (1898–1936) retain an enduring fascination for readers around the world. Murdered by Nationalists at the outset of the Spanish Civil War, Lorca died at the peak of his creative powers. He remains his country's most widely translated writer, surpassed only by Cervantes in terms of critical commentary. This selection includes 55 of the 68 poems that comprised Lorca's 1921 Libro de poemas, all of them in their entirety and in their original sequence. Imbued with the spirit and folklore of the poet's native Andalusia, these verses feature the most complex spiritual content of any of Lorca's works. Editor Stanley Appelbaum provides sensitive, accurate English translations on the pages facing the original Spanish, as well as an informative introduction to the author's life and oeuvre, plus notes on the individual poems. An outstanding resource for students and teachers of Spanish language and literature, this compilation will enchant any lover of poetry.

The Iranian poet and painter Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) is revered today for many of the things he was criticized for during his lifetime. Born and raised in the ancient city of Kashan, he was educated in Tehran and travelled widely. A gentle introvert by nature, he was accused of escapism when his reaction to the world around him was to go back to nature, mysticism and mythology, poetry and painting. This mystic of the twentieth century seeks a light that radiates from the individual soul and ultimately affects its relationship with others and the world around it. While Rumi, the mystic of the thirteenth century, dances, sings, and chants out loud that he comes from the world of spirit and is a stranger in the world of matter, Sepehri, quietly aware of humanity in a milieu alien to its physical, psychological, and spiritual needs, in poetry and painting, appeared to stroke human consciousness into a tranquility, almost a state of beatitude, which nevertheless is never quite free of the ongoing struggle for "awareness, understanding and illumination." Sepehri had a free and sometimes convoluted approach to the verities of life, insisting that the book of everyday "illusions" must be closed and ... ... one must rise And walk along the stretch of time, Look at the flowers, hear the enigma. One must run until the end of being ... One must sit close to the unfolding, Some place between rapture and illumination. (Both Line and Space. Bk.8) In this fresh translation, Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid successfully conveys the meaning, feelings, and sensitivity of the Persian original allowing the reader to appreciate the pertinence of Sepehri to the twenty-first century.Sohrab Sepehri, poet and painter, was born in Kashan, Iran in 1928 and was claimed by cancer in 1980. He had an upbringing that tried to discipline and shape him, whether at home or at school, but he was not exactly a conformist. He was an intelligent, sensitive, artistically gifted, poetically expressive, somewhat withdrawn, soft-spoken human being. Sepehri started painting and writing poetry at an early age. He excelled at both. For both he received acclaim and criticism. Now he is enshrined as one of the foremost Iranian poets and painters of the twentieth century. This modern-day aref (mystic), poet. and painter is convincingly sincere in his heartfelt and touching approach to the way we must look at our world, and our fellow humans, in these stressful, problematic times.

One hundred and fifty-six poems, grouped by theme, are accompanied by drawings, oils, and watercolors by the poet.

Here in one volume is a selection of the extraordinary poems of Rita Dove, who, as the nation's Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, brought poetry into the lives of millions of people. Along with a new introduction and poem, Selected Poems comprises Dove's collections The Yellow House on the Corner, which includes a group of poems devoted to the themes of slavery and freedom; Museum, intimate ruminations on home and the world; and finally, Thomas and Beulah, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, a verse cycle loosely based on her grandparents' lives. Precisely yet intensely felt, resonant with the voices of ordinary people, Rita Dove's Selected Poems is marked by lyric intensity and compassionate storytelling.

Winner of the Herder Prize, Nichita Stanescu was one of Romania’s most celebrated contemporary poets. This dazzling collection of poems – the most extensive collection of his work to date – reveals a world in which heavenly and mysterious forces converse with the everyday and earthbound, where love and a quest for truth are central, and urgent questions flow. His startling images stretch the boundaries of thought. His poems, at once surreal and corporeal, lead us into new metaphysical and linguistic terrain.