A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vicente Aleixandre

Vicente Aleixandre, Lewis Hyde, ed.

Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. This bilingual volume collects the finest poetry spanning Aleixandre’s entire career—from early surrealist work to his complex “dialogues.” Introduction and descriptive bibliography by Lewis Hyde.

ISBN: 9781556592546

Format: Paperback

About the Author

Vicente Aleixandre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977, at the age of seventy-nine. At the time, his poetry was barely known outside of Spain, and just two small editions were available in American translation. Two years later, Harper & Row brought out Lewis Hyde’s bilingual edition of Aleixandre’s selected poems, A Longing for the Light. When the book was left to go out of print, Copper Canyon published a paperback edition in 1985. Express Books noted in an …

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About the Editor

Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World (1998) uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the kind of disruptive intelligence all cultures need if they are to remain lively, flexible, and open to change. Hyde’s most recent book, Common as Air, is a spirited defense of …

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Reviews

“Highly recommended.” —Independent Publisher

“This book shows how Aleixandre struggled with his intense emotions, drew upon surrealism to find a language to express that struggle, and finally emerged with a voice of clarity and control… There is a Whitmanesque expansiveness here, a stepping beyond boundaries… A Longing for the Light offers that rare gift, a view of the heart in all its complexity, with all its struggles and longings.” —John Bradley, The Bloomsbury Review

“[Vicente Aleixandre] is one of the greatest poets alive and his work stands for endurance, the roots under the tree of consciousness, the slowly growing trunk.” —Robert Bly