Here the poet begins to emerge as a kind of oracle, a role he will take on with greater intensity in the poems that follow.

Moon and Panorama of the Insects

Jose de Espronceda (1808-1842) Spanish Romantic poet.

VII. Return to the City

New York: Office and Denunciation

Fernando Vela (1888-1966) Spanish critic.

The poet's oracular voice grows. He offers himself as a sacrifice to be eaten by the crushed cows.

Jewish Cemetery

In Abandoned Church, Lorca writes from the point of view of a parent. In Landscape with Two Tombs and an Assyrian Dog, he writes from the point of view of a friend. In Jewish Cemetery, he writes from the point of view of a spiritual visionary. The progression is consistent with the book's movement from chronicle to prophecy.

Sombrero de copa is literally a top hat. Lorca is referring, though, not to formal wear but to the hats worn by Hassidic Jews.

Small Infinite Poem and Crucifixion

These two poems were lost and not found until 1950. Several of Lorca's letters to friends reveal that he intended them for inclusion in Poet in New York, though he did not specify their exact placement in the book. We have included them here because they fit with the growing role of the poet as spiritual visionary evidenced in this section.

VIII. Two Odes

These represent the dramatic high point of the poet's journey, the poet as one who will not just denounce, not just sacrifice himself, but will speak for those who can't speak for themselves. This is a far cry from the poet who doesn't recognize his face, who is murdered by the sky, who is nostalgic for the childhood and can't admit love. Here Lorca is pronouncing to the world and longing for "the arrival of the kingdom of grain." These two poems, the most ambitious of the book, announce a Lorca who will be much in evidence when he returns to Spain from New York.

IX. Flight from New York

The waltzes, simple and playful, move toward civilization, which the city doesn't represent. Rather, think childhood and nature dancing around each other.

X. The Poet Arrives in Havana

Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) Cuban ethnologist and musicologist, the first to recognize and highlight the importance of African elements in Cuban culture.

Son of Blacks in Cuba

Lorca is using the term son broadly here to mean tune or song, rather than specifically to refer to the type of Cuban music called son (the precursor of salsa), popularized in the last decade by the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. The poem in structure and refrain more closely resembles rumba, another type of Cuban music, which had its origins among the blacks in the barrios of Santiago de Cuba.

Lorca almost certainly meant to evoke the very Cuban canaveral, meaning sugarcane field instead of canavera, meaning reed-grass.

Luis Carcloza y Aragon (1904-1992) One of the most important Guatemalan poets of his time, rivaled in stature only by the Nobelist Miguel Angel Asturias.

Further Reading

Guillermo Diaz-Plaja. Federico Garcia Lorca (Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1954).

Daniel Eisenberg. "Poeta en Nueva York; historia y problemas de un texto de Lorca" (Biblioteca Virtual, Miguel de Cervantes, 1975).

Federico Garcia Lorca. In Search of Duende, edited by Christopher Maurer (New Directions, New York, 1955, 1998).

Okras Com pletas, edited by Arturo del Hoyo with notes by Arturo del Hoyo, Jorge Guillen, and Vicente Aleixandre. (Aguilar, Madrid, 1980).

. Libro de poemas, Poema del cante jondo, Romancero gitano, Poeta en Nueva York, Odas, Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, Bodas de sangre, Yerma, prologo de Salvador Novo (Editorial Porrua, Mexico, 1989).

. Poeta en Nueva York, Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias, Divan del Tamarit (Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1972).

Poet in New York, translated by Ben Belitt, introduction by Angel del Rio (Grove, New York, 1955).

. Poet in New York, translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White, edited and with an introduction by Christopher Maurer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1998).

and Salvador Dali. Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali, edited by Christopher Maurer (Swan Isle Press, Chicago, 2004).

Isabel Garcia Lorca. Recuerdos mios (Tusquets Editores, Barcelona, 2002).

Ian Gibson. Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life (Pantheon, New York, 1989).

. Lorca's Granada: A Practical Guide (Faber & Faber, London, 1992).

Edward Hirsch. The Demon and the Angel (Harcourt, San Diego & New York, 2002).

Leslie Stainton. Lorca: ADream of Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1999).