The Catalan Poems

Longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award 2020 Spain's greatest living poet, Pere Gimferrer (b.1945) has written more than thirty books spanning verse, fiction, essay, and criticism. His earliest writings appeared in Spanish. In 1970 he began publishing in Catalan, and has alternated between the two languages since (with occasional forays into French and Italian). The present collection, the first book-length publication of Gimferrer's Catalan poetry in English, brings together work from all phases of his career. His poetry is a marvel of syncretism: Billie Holiday, the medieval polymath Ramon Llull, Ezra Pound, and the artist Tàpies all appear in his pages. His style draws equally on modernism, on Galician-Portuguese love lyrics, on Góngora and on the Valencian metaphysical poet Ausiàs March. Rounding out the volume is a selection from the Dietari, an artistic diary that outlines his poetics and his sense of the artist's vocation through a series of meditations on Casanova, Octavio Paz and others.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1953.

Each poem in 'Edward Hopper' is based on a painting by the American artist. Together they form a narrative sketching the life of the subject from small-town origins to big-city life, from youth to age.

In Postwar Catalan Poetry, Rosenthal's translations offer North American readers a chance to follow the evolution of this literary form over the last fifty years.

This anthology starts in 1920. At that time, Catalan had grown from an insignificant regional dialect to a modern tongue with one of the richest literatures in Europe. This collection coincides with a resurgence of interest in the Catalan culture, and the printed word in particular.

Two standpoints govern the approach taken to the poetry of Salvador Espriu in this extended study of his work. First, the author explores the structural implications of symmetry and numerology, in a chronological rather than thematic survey of the poetry - a procedure that involves a consideration of how each book attains its distinctive character while having common preoccupations and stylistic traits. Secondly, he examines the tension implicit in Espriu's poetry between involvement and detachment or between the civic and the lyric.

Versions or translations of one of Europe's most important and least known poets, Joan Maragall, an essential figure of Catalan literature. These poems begin in patriotic celebration of all things Catalonian, folklore, folk dance, song... then wrestle to embrace both Catholicism & 19th Century German philosophy. Along the way, anarchist terrorism, the Spanish American War, and the seeds of Socialism appear. But like all great poetry, Joan Maragall's work transcends its era to touch all readers who encounter it. This is the English world's first chance to encounter a large selection of Maragall's poems brought into English. It is unlikely to be the last.

Màrius Torres is the main representative of the symbolist style in Catalan literature. His poetry, written in the tubercular sanatorium of Puig d'Olena, in the Catalonian mountains, is full of insinuative presages of his own death. A consummate poet, Màrius Torres has not yet been given the full recognition he deserves.