When Pedro Salinas’s 1933 collection of love poems, La voz a ti debida, was introduced to American audiences in Willis Barnstone’s 1975 English translation, it was widely regarded as the greatest sequence of love poems written by a man or a woman, in any language, in the twentieth century. Now, seventy-five years after its publication, the reputation of the poems and its multifaceted writer remains untarnished. A portrait of their era, the poems, from a writer in exile from his native civil war–torn Spain, now reemerge in our time. In this new, facing-page bilingual edition, Barnstone has added thirty-six poems written in the form of letters from Salinas to his great love, Katherine Whitmore. Discovered years later, these poems were written during and after the composition of La voz and, though disguised as prose, have all the rhythms and sounds of lineated lyric poetry. Taken together, the poems and letters are a history, a dramatic monologue, and a crushing and inevitable ending to the story of a man consumed by his love and his art. Bolstered by an elegant foreword by Salinas’s contemporary, the poet Jorge Guillén, and a masterly afterword by the Salinas scholar, Enric Bou, that considers the poet and his legacy for twenty-first century world poetry, Love Poems by Pedro Salinas will be cause for celebration throughout the world of verse and beyond.

The Spanish poet Pedro Salinas is a member of that group of brilliant and original poets called the Generation of '27, a group which includes Rafael Alberti, Jorge Guillén, Luis Cernuda, Vincente Aleixandre, and Frederico García Lorca. First published as La voz a ti debida in Madrid in 1933, Salinas' sequence of seventy poems is his most famous work, and is thought by many to be the best book of love poetry written in this century. Willis Barnstone's translation makes it available as a whole for the first time in English. As part of Spain's vanguard movement, Salinas believed in reviving elements from earlier eras, as is demonstrated by a title such as Razón de amor (from the medieval Sermon of Love), as well as Largo Lamento and La voz a ti debida (from the Renaissance poet Garcilaso de la Vega). Salinas shows a natural affinity with the intricate objectivity of the baroque poet Góngora, and continues the Spanish mystical tradition while reaching the metaphysical through human love. And though he learned much from earlier eras, he is also very much of this century, as is seen in his imagery of typewriters, telephones, and car radiators, all deftly handled through a variety of poetic moods. In fact, few modern poets have so discerningly employed the external data of our experience as transformed though the emotions and imagination. For Salinas "Telegraph wires carry kisses." He is by turns playful, ironic, sentimental, and despairing, leading us through love's sense of amazement, humor, tragedy. Salinas' confessional persona speaks with extraordinary power, and the poems operate both individually and cumulatively. Willis Barnstone's translation captures the changing tones of the poet's internal journey, giving us a deep sense of the variety and poignancy found in the original. My Voice Because of You has been accepted in UNESCO's series of translations of European literature.

When Pedro Salinas’s 1933 collection of love poems, La voz a ti debida, was introduced to American audiences in Willis Barnstone’s 1975 English translation, it was widely regarded as the greatest sequence of love poems written by a man or a woman, in any language, in the twentieth century. Now, seventy-five years after its publication, the reputation of the poems and its multifaceted writer remains untarnished. A portrait of their era, the poems, from a writer in exile from his native civil war–torn Spain, now reemerge in our time. In this new, facing-page bilingual edition, Barnstone has added thirty-six poems written in the form of letters from Salinas to his great love, Katherine Whitmore. Discovered years later, these poems were written during and after the composition of La voz and, though disguised as prose, have all the rhythms and sounds of lineated lyric poetry. Taken together, the poems and letters are a history, a dramatic monologue, and a crushing and inevitable ending to the story of a man consumed by his love and his art. Bolstered by an elegant foreword by Salinas’s contemporary, the poet Jorge Guillén, and a masterly afterword by the Salinas scholar, Enric Bou, that considers the poet and his legacy for twenty-first century world poetry, Love Poems by Pedro Salinas will be cause for celebration throughout the world of verse and beyond.

Pedro Salinas (1892-1951), one of the greatest modern poets of any country, is unquestionably the preeminent love poet of twentieth-century Spain. Memory in My Hands includes an ample selection of his three books of love poetry - The Voice I Owe to You [La voz a ti debida], A Reason for Love [Razón de amor], and Long Lament [Largo lamento] in English translation alongside the Spanish original. This trilogy of love poems, the last (posthumous) of which has never been translated before, are of a nature to win a large and devoted audience: they are at once passionate, eloquent, and whimsical. The introduction to Memory in My Hands sets the poems in context, providing the story of the love affair that inspired the poems. It also raises the question of the nature of autobiographical poetry and considers this collection in the tradition of poetic sequences such as Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella.

This is a collection of love poems by Pedro Salinas. The poems are shown in English and Spanish and include selections from The Voice I Owe You, A Reason for Love and Long Lament. The introduction by professor Crispin draws upon Salinas's papers at Harvard and places the poems in a personal context.

From the 12th-century Cantar de Mío Cid to the 20th-century poetry of Garcia Lorca, Salinas and Alberti, this book contains 37 poems by Spain's greatest poets. Spanish texts with literal English translations; biographical, critical commentary.