“Passionate, primal and poetic…beautifully translated by Langston Hughes.” –NOW Toronto
“[Merwin’s] translation reveals this sensitivity, this sense of scale and musicality.” –Melia Benussen, Introduction
One of Spain’s greatest poets and dramatists, Federico Garcia Lorca wrote in many styles but achieved maturity and fame with his peasant plays, Blood Wedding and Yerma, in which impassioned language and imagery accentuate tragic narratives. These never-before published translations unite Garcia Lorca’s masterpieces with two of America’s most gifted poets, Langston Hughes and W.S. Merwin.
The epigrammatic style and unsentimental lyricism of W.S. Merwin heighten the urgency and fervor of Yerma, the story of a woman whose thwarted yearning for a child makes her murder her indifferent husband. Preeminent African-American poet Langston Hughes infuses his version of Blood Wedding—the story of an unwilling bride who elopes with her lover on her wedding night—with the rhythmic intensity and linguistic beauty only a fellow poet could achieve.
