Longing: Selected Poems

By Jaime Gil de Biedma

The poetry of Jaime Gil de Biedma, the most original and influential Spanish poet since the civil war, is finally, after years of censorship under Generalissimo Franco, reaching a huge audience in Spain. His poems capture the mood of post-civil war Spain and of cosmopolitan Barcelona, where the poet belonged to a celebrated literary movement within the antifascist resistance. His poems are ironic and urban, satiric and unusually Mediterranean. The poet profiled in his poetry--defiant, self-mocking, with a nostalgic tango in the background--has become a legendary figure in the long struggle of the Spanish t emerge from the dictatorship modern and free. Jaime Gil de Biedma was born in Barcelona in 1929. He studied law, and then worked and lived in Manila for long periods. He died of AIDS in 1990. James Nolan is the author of Why I Live in the Forest and What Moves Is Not the Wind (Weslyan University Press), and the translator of Pablo Neruda's Stones of the Sky (Copper Canyon).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872862771
• ISBN13: 9780872862777
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 116 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Fine, sensitive, charming, full of life and insight

This is one of finest pieces of Spanish poetry of the second half of this century. It is cunningly sharp and precise, picturing life with a whole range of different colors and yet I must confess that, as with wines, the book acquires a different and better taste as time goes on. It is, with no doubt, good value for money.