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Book Review: "Selected Poems" by Federico Garcia Lorca

5/5 - Revolutionary and rebellious language in the beautiful poetry of the Spanish literary genius...

By Annie KapurPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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A photo from my Instagram - @AnnieApproximately

When I first read Federico Garcia Lorca, I was only about sixteen and I cannot remember exactly what I was reading because it was not a book. It was on a sheet of paper and it was one of his poems. The only thing I did remember [because I wrote it in my journal] was that it was 'revolutionary' in language [is how I put it]. Through reading a book filled the selected best poems of Lorca, I have come to re-establish what that means. I wrote it to mean that the images that I was reading of Lorca and relating it to the context of the Spanish Civil War in which he had been active in, this would have been a revolutionary act and may have been one of the reasons that ultimately and unfortunately, he was killed. The intense liberation of human emotion in the poems may have been one of the reasons why the Spanish Army were not too fond of Lorca's writings and why Lorca, in the many years after the Civil War, became an icon for freedom, revolution and basically one of the heroes of Spain.

It is not unknown that he was a great writer and many people ever since his death, have been interested in the images within his poems - those concerning life and death especially. This is also because in one of his poems, Lorca is seen to predict the way and time in which he will die and the fact that he was exactly correct was astounding to say the least. He also predicted that the people would never find his body and, he was unfortunately right about that too. To this day, we have no idea where he is.

In this poetry collection, it seems to cover Lorca's more emotional mystical poems and the theme of death is pounding on in the styles of traditional Spanish gypsy music and the new revolution's identity of rebellion and togetherness.

Let's now take a look at some of the quotations that were especially amazing from this text - and it was very hard to choose.

This extract is from a poem entitled "The Landscape"

"The field

of olive trees opens and closes

like a fan.

Above the olive grove

a foundering sky

and a dark rain

of cold stars.

Bulrush and penumbra tremble

at the river's edge.

The gray air ripples.

The olive trees

are laden

with cries.

A flock

of captive birds

moving their long long

tails in the gloom."

There is a strange and almost uncomfortable image within this poem of darkness, gloom and obviously - grey air. Grey air could be polluted or coated in gunfire because of people being killed. The olive tree being 'laden with cries' would support this because death causes grieving and this is ideologically done under trees according to aspects of literary history. It has depth and never mentions the situation directly, but seems to call you to move, to get up and to fight back the cause.

The poem "Oil Lamp" is somewhat like "The Landscape" in its ability to make the reader feel slightly uncomfortable by the imagery without anything actually going wrong or any conflict literally ensuing. Except obviously, the death at the end:

"Oh, how gravely the flame

of the oil lamp meditates.

Like an Indian fakir

it gazes as its golden entrails

then goes into eclipse dreaming

atmospheres with no wind.

Incandescent stork

from its nest pecks

at the massive shadows

and trembling approaches

the round eyes

of the dead gypsy boy."

The death being of a 'boy' instead of a 'man' is obviously disturbing, but the very beginning of the poem is uncomfortable too, creating this driving, slow-beat tension that is dark and full of doom until the very end where it will stop, almost suddenly.

This is taken from a piece of poetic prose entitled "In the Garden of the Lunar Grapefruits"

"I have taken leave of the friends I love the most and have set out on a short, dramatic journey. On a silver mirror I find, long before dawn, the satchel with the clothing I'll need for exotic country to which I'm heading. The tight, cold scent of sunrise beats weirdly on the huge escarpment we call night. On the sky's stretched page a cloud's initial letter trembles, and below my balcony a nightingale and frog raise up a sleepy cross of sound. I - tranquil, melancholy man - make my final preparations, impeded by those subtlest feelings aroused in me by wings and by concentric circles. On the white wall in my room, stiff and rigid like a snake in a museum, hangs the noble sword my grandfather carried in the war against Don Carlos the Pretender. With reverence I take the sword down, coated with yellow rust like a white poplar, and I gird it on me while remembering that I'll have to go through an awful invisible fight before I enter the garden. An ecstatic and ferocious fight against my secular enemy, the giant dragon Common Sense."

Don't worry, I'm almost done...

So I can honestly say that there is a lot to unpack in this book with Lorca's themes being all very prominent as you read on. But I can also say that it is one of his best works to date - his poetry is some of the greatest of the century.

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About the Creator

Annie Kapur

190K+ Reads on Vocal.

English Lecturer

🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)

🎓Film & Writing (M.A)

🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd)

📍Birmingham, UK

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