Description

Black Tulips is a selection from the poetry of Jose Maria Hinojosa, the first English translation of a well-known poet of Spain's famed Generation of '27, which included Lorca, Dal , Bu uel, Alberti, Aleixandre and Hernandez. His right wing politics caused him to break with the group during the Spanish Republic. He was assassinated by Republican sympathizers in 1936 and his writing disappeared from Spanish culture until the end of the 20th century.

Praise For…

In Black Tulips, the poetry of José María Hinojosa—at times

mysterious, intimate and startling—leaps imaginatively into English in

poet Mark Statman's masterful translations, which are poems in their own

right. Hinojosa's finely honed and often minimalist verses are sharply

rendered by Statman, whose achievement illustrates the essential

artistry of literary translation. —MARGARET B. CARSON, translator of My Two Worlds by Sergio Cheifec and Theory of Colors by Mercedes Roffé

The poetry of José María Hinojosa—lost but now found—merits our

attention for its brilliance, and Mark Statman is well equipped to bring

it into American speech. His translations here capture the surprise and

violence of the original poems in Spanish, with accuracy and lyrical

force. —JONATHAN COHEN, compiler of William Carlos Williams's

translations, By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916-1959

Black Tulips is a noteworthy selection of the poetry of the

long-ignored and regrettably oft-underappreciated José María Hinojosa.

The beautiful poems contained in the book have never before been

translated into English. Thanks to the splendid work of poet/translator

Mark Statman, we now have Hinojosa's poems like taut-skinned apples

green and red, to be held, admired and savored. —ARTURO MANTECÓN, translator of My Naked Brain: Selected Poems, Leopoldo María Panero

The lyric strength that José María Hinojosa expressly left in his

poetry of pre Civil War Spain, as part of the Generation of '27, creates

a voyage through time through Mark Statman's impeccable translation in

2012. Through the prism of this treatise, the interpretive expertise

proliferates: "A splinter of light pierces the black tulips," being in

the place of the other, becoming one with the phrases of the other,

being of another context is the edge that Black Tulips asserts.

Statman revives a poet who was nearly forgotten. For the delight of

readers, Statman has recreated Hinojosa's poetry in his translation.

—XÁNATH CARAZA, author of Conjuro, bilingual poetry

Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of José María Hinojosa, translated

by Mark Statman, is a major literary achievement. Mark Statman has

unearthed the poetry of a long-forgotten member of the Generation of

'27—that gathering of poets that included Pedro Salinas, Rafael Alberti,

and Federico García Lorca, among others. Thanks to Statman, Hinojosa's

work can now be accorded its proper place among that august group.

Statman's acumen as both poet and translator is evident in every page.

The results are translations that are faithful to Hinojosa's originals

while standing as fine English poems in their own right. —PABLO

MEDINA

As we get past the ideological contentions of the twentieth century,

writers are emerging whom we can now see in a more appreciative, less

contested way. The far too short-lived Spanish poet José María Hinojosa

is a sterling example. Mark Statman's compelling translations bring

alive the many sides of Hinojosa—the elegiac, the contemplative, the

poignant, and, in the utterly unexpected poem about the actress Lillian

Gish, the truly hilarious. Hinojosa above all is a profound poet of

human love in all its manifestations, as celebrated in nature and as

clung to amid the mesh of war and suffering. Those who thought they knew

twentieth-century Spanish poetry will have to reboot their cognitive

maps after experiencing these concise, uncanny, perennially surprising

poems. —NICHOLAS BIRNS, author, Theory to Theory

For many years, José María Hinojosa (1904-1936) was a poet unknown to

most readers, even in Spain. Both his voluntary renunciation of poetry

in 1931 and the condemnatory silence of colleagues, critics, and editors

after his assassination during the Spanish Civil War were partly

responsible. It took a fashionable return to surrealism in the

mid-1970's to allow for the poet to be rediscovered, with the

publication of his Obra completa, the six books published between 1925 and 1931, that had brought Hinojosa fame: Poema del Campo, Poesía de Perfil, La Rosa de los Vientos, Orillas de la luz, La flor de California and La Sangre en libertad. Since

then, a collection of Spanish scholars and editors have worked to

reclaim his proper place in contemporary Spanish poetry. Thanks to the

commitment of the poet Mark Statman, for the first time, the English

speaking reader can hear Hinojosa's wonderfully imaginative voice, the

clarity and call for authentic freedom in his work. These readers now

can appreciate the poetry that rightfully puts him among his peers:

Alberti, Cernuda, Lorca, and the other poets of the Generation of

27. —ALFONSO SANCHEZ, poet, critic, editor of Obra completa (1923-1931), José María Hinojosa (Fundacion Genesian, Sevilla, 1998)