I'm Speaking: Selected Poems

by Rafael Guillen
translated by Sandy McKinney

Northwestern University Press, 2001
Cloth: 978-0-8101-1851-5 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-2024-2
Library of Congress Classification PQ6613.U53A25 2001
Dewey Decimal Classification 861.64

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Rafael Guillén's poems paint vivid portraits of the land and people of his native Andalusia. In sharp-edged words tinged with a certain tender grief, Guillén presents the harshness and beauty of his country-the calm seashore and the violent revolutions, the wheat fields and the famine, the children and the laborers toiling under the oppressive Spanish sun. Behind the imagery and language a quiet force builds as Guillén reflects on coming of age during the Spanish Civil War and on love, life, death, and faith in modern-day Granada, Paris, and the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Rafael Guillén was born in Granada, Spain, in 1933 and still calls the city his home. His many books of poetry include La configuración de lo perdido: Antología, 1957-1995, Versos del amor cumplido: Antología 1956-1985, and Los estados transparentes. He is a major "Fifties Generation" poet, and his work has been widely translated. In 1994 he was awarded Spain's National Prize for Literature for Los estados transparentes after having been a finalist for the Critics' Prize.

REVIEWS

"[Guillén] is an extraordinary poet of the speaking, singing voice. His poems reanimate the urgent intensities of Andalusian life and portray the tragic magnificence of human determination and perseverance. Sandy McKinney has brought this great poet into passionate, lucid American English for the first time." --Reginald Gibbons, author of Sweetbitter

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"A gifted poet in her own right, McKinney has given Guillén a passionate, spare, clean, lyrical English voice. Guillén has said, 'I am after what is real, specific, concrete, alive,' and McKinney has delivered it to us, undiminished in its passage into fresh, splendid English poetry."
--Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Translator's Introduction: A Conversation with Rafael Guillén

Estoy hablando
I'm Speaking

Gesto final
The Last Gesture

Signos en el polvo
Tracings in the Dust

Poema por una muchacha triste
Poem of a Sad Girl

Poema para la voz de Marilyn Monroe
Poem for the Voice of Marilyn Monroe

Un día, con el alba
One Day, With the Dawn

Apenas si recuerdo
I Hardly Remember

La ultima ternura
The Final Tenderness

Los esposos
Spouses

Después del baile
After the Ball

Introducción al misterio
Introduction to Mystery

Un gesto para el quinto anniversario de tu muerte
A Gesture for the Fifth Anniversary of Your Death

Ser un instante
To Be an Instant

Hoy no existe París
Today Paris Doesn't Exist

Un bar en América
A Bar in America

Vuelve un amigo
A Friend Comes Back

Tornado
Sent Back

Donde sonó una risa
Where Laughter Once Rang Out

El miedo, no
Not Fear

Piedra-libre
Hide-and-Seek

Como si fuera un hombre
As If There Were a Man

Oleo
Oil

Farándula
Roadshow

Moho
Mold

Destajo
Task Work

Desguace
Splintering

Estancia
The Front Room

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