Myra here.
Thank you to our dear friend Linda Baie of Teacher Dance for hosting this week.
Happy Valentine’s Day, fellow poetry lovers. For today’s very special day, I thought of cracking open this massive bilingual poetry collection that has been languishing in my shelves for quite awhile now. Pablo Neruda is not my only go-to poet for occasions such as today, there is also Federico Garcia Lorca, whose poems I copied by hand when I was a graduate student as I frequented one of my favourite indie bookshops in Katipunan (called Pages, in operation only for a few years before it closed down), because I can not afford to purchase his book. When I finally had the resources, I made sure that it was one of my first book buys.
Collected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca (Amazon | Book Depository)
Published by Farrar Straus & Giroux (2002, first published 1962)
ISBN: 0374126151 (ISBN13: 9780374126155). Bought my own copy of the book. Book photos taken by me and edited using an iPhone app.
One of the things that we are committed to doing this year is to read more international literature, and that includes poetry. While I have not read this entire book from cover to cover, here are a few poems that managed to find me today. I hope they speak to you, too.
There is an air of melancholia in these first two poems, the spider of silence, the spider of forgetting, the lonely room. I think what made me gravitate towards his poetry is this unerring disclosure of truth that is bare and unafraid.
These two poems speak of movement, a shifting of the heart, a closing of the wound, a turning to the flower’s perfume.
Which poem spoke to you more?
Gathering Books 
I have a small book (bilingual) of Lorca’s poems and have always loved it. They are so poignant and capture so much win so few words.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry, that was “capture so much with so few words.” Thank you for featuring some of his poems. It was a lovely selection.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’d like to read more of him. Thank you for sharing this extraordinary work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It feels as if he is turning toward love at last, after so much heartache. These are lovely, Myra.Thank you! And Happy Valentine’s Day!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for this Myra. I loved the picture book, Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown & illustrated by Julie Paschkis, but haven’t actually sat down and read any of his work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for introducing me to a new poet!
LikeLiked by 1 person