Selected Poems of Salvador Espriu

This selection, translated from the catalan, marks the debut of Salvador Espriu in this country. One of Spain's great twentieth-century poets, who spent his life in the pursuit of 'the hard prize of a few bare words,' Espriu viewed his nine major books of poems (approximately eight poems from each are represented here) as a single meditation on death. In his spare, rarely rhymed verse, the simplest words are burnished to an elemental power: the words of landscape, the elements, death itself.

In this bilingual edition, with a preface by the translator and an introduction by Francesc Vallverdú, Espriu's friend and Spanish publisher, Magda Bogin has given us a glimpse into a remarkable body of poetry from a poet whose literary stature in Spain is akin to that of William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, or Ezra Pound in the English-speaking world.