New Poetry from Spain, an Anthology

Talisman House just published New Poetry From Spain. Bilingual Edition. Edited and Translated from the Spanish by Marta López-Luaces, Johnny Lorenz, and Edwin M. Lamboy.

From the introduction by Marta López-Luaces: “The poetic texts chosen and translated here represent a profound transition-psychological and political-undergone by the new Spanish citizen. This anthology focuses on the poetry written in Spain after 1975. All the poets included were raised under Franco’s dictatorship, which lasted forty years. Those born in the sixties or later, such as Ernesto López García and Luis Muñoz, lived under the dictatorial regime for less than a decade; consequently, they experienced the dictatorship as a vague memory rather than as a foundation, unlike the older poets. In any case, the social reality after Franco’s death in 1975 was very different from that in which all of these poets had been raised. A new conception of the self had to emerge after the transition to democracy, and this was expressed in the work of many poets as a liberating, though painful, transformation, a transformation that affected the very concept of language. Naturally, the radical reinvention of language produced a reinvention of the self.”

Poetry by Juana Castro, Antonio Colinas, Jenaro Talens, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Olvido García Valdés, Diego Martínez Torrón, Francisco Ruiz Noguera, Jaime Siles, César Antonio Molina, Julia Otxoa, Miguel Casado, María Antonia Ortega, Juan Carlos Suñén, Juan Carlos Mestre, Emilio Porta, Tomás Sánchez Santiago, Rodolfo Häsler, Blanca Andreu, Amalia Iglesias Serna, Jorge Riechmann, Marta López-Luaces, Luis Muñoz, Jordi Doce, Vicente Luis Mora, and Ernesto García López.

Marta López-Luaces teaches Spanish and Latin American Literatures at Montclair State University. She has published three books of poetry, Distancias y destierros (1998), Las lenguas del viajero (2005), and Los arquitectos de lo imaginario (2010). She is the co- director of Galerna, a Spanish-language literary journal published in the United States.

Johnny Lorenz teaches literature at Montclair State University. His poems, translations, and critical essays have appeared in many journals. His translation of Clarice Lispector’s novel A Breath of Life is forthcoming from New Directions.

Edwin M. Lamboy directs the Secondary Spanish Education Program at The City College of New York. In addition to articles, he is the author of Caribbean Spanish in the Metropolis (2004) and Temas (2006). He is currently working on a book on bilingualism and multilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world.