Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) is arguably the most famous of all Spanish poets. As a young writer he became friends with the artist, Salvador Dali, and the filmmaker, Luis Bunuel. They, along with other writers, as well as artists, filmmakers and other creative types became known as the Generation of ‘27. Lorca was drawn to surrealism, and much of his poetry takes on a surrealistic air.
One of Lorca’s most important works is Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York), a body of poems composed during a visit to New York City in 1929/1930. While he was there the stock marker crashed and the Great Depression began. His experiences here in America influenced his work (and his political views) tremendously. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the book as, “a series of poems whose dense, at times hallucinatory images, free-verse lines, and thematic preoccupation with urban decay and social injustice mark an audacious departure from Lorca’s previous work.”
His return to Spain in 1930 coincided with the fall of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. In 1931, Lorca was appointed director of a student theater company, Teatro Universitario La Barraca (The Shack). It was funded by the Ministry of Education and fhe company began touring Spain's rural areas in order to introduce audiences to classical Spanish theater free of charge. They sought to bring theater to people who had never seen any.
When Francisco Franco launched his fascist coup in 1936, Lorca was at home near Granada which soon became fascist territory in Spain. As a famous ally of the Republic, he was arrested and assassinated just days after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
My first introduction to Lorca’s poetry, many years ago, was through these New York poems. An excerpt from one of the poems, “Dance of Death”, has been posted on the bulletin board above my desk for many years. I often read it to remind myself of the kind of poetry I strive to write, but will never achieve. But it’s the quest that counts, right? I’ve included it below, and I encourage you to read (or reread) Poet in New York soon for your own inspiration.
I will follow the Lorca excerpt, uncharacteristically, with a poem of my own about the effects of war. The poem was first published in the journal Burdock in 2016.
You can find out more about Lorca here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/federico-garcia-lorca
Excerpt from “Dance of Death”:
This isn’t a strange place
for the dance, I tell you.
The mask will dance
among columns of blood and numbers,
between hurricanes of gold
and groans of the unemployed,
who will howl in the dead of the night,
for your dark time.
(from Poet in New York by Federico Lorca and published posthumously in 1940).
Lorca for Beginners
the mask will dance among columns of blood and numbers, among hurricanes of gold and the groans of the unemployed who will howl in the dead of night for your dark time.
-Federico Garcia Lorca, Dance of Death, New York, 1929
The blood and numbers are tallied
on the same sheet of the ledger,
columns on a page titled, Cost benefit analysis.
Worn now by generals, now by politicians
and now by corporate leaders,
the mask delights and dances
as the numbers roll in:
so many wars
so many lives ruined
so many deaths
so much profit.
Politicians practice their pirouettes
as they wait their turn to wear the mask
to take the stage and praise the generals
and shower the CEOs in blood
now turned to gold.
The darkness is ours
and is filled with our howls.
(first published in Burdock#15, February 2016)