Winner of the 2000 Harold Morton Landon Translati+C100on Award.
A major Spanish poet of the Generation of ’27, Jorge Guillén’s luminous poetry, marked by nobility of mind, balance, and clarity of vision, deserves to be more widely known to readers of English.
Guillén was born in Valladolid, Old Castile. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he was arrested and detained briefly in Pamplona as a political prisoner. He left Spain in 1938 and went into voluntary exile in the United States, where he remained until after the death of Franco. In 1978 he returned to live in Spain. He died in Málaga in 1984.
Many poems in Horses in the Air were written in America; many of them have never been translated into English before. Guillén’s view of Europe from the New World, his experience as an exile and an immigrant, as well as his encounter with Spanish America and with Spain in America provide insights into our shared culture that are fresh and relevant today.