Landscape with Yellow Birds

José Ángel Valente (1929-2000) produced more than twenty volumes of poetry and many important essays. He lived in Switzerland from 1958 to 1982, and some of his work was not allowed to be published in Franco's Spain. Valente expressed that poetry is a "revelation of an aspect of reality to which there is no means of access other than through poetic knowledge." He was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras in 1988, the Premio de la Fundación Pablo Iglesias in 1984, the Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana in 1993, the Premio de la Crítica in 1960 and 1990, and the Premio Nacional de Literatura posthumously in 2000. Upon his death in 2000, The Independent called him "Spain's greatest contemporary poet."

Thomas Christensen is the author of 1616: The World in Motion and New World/New Words: Recent Writing from the Americas. He has translated, often in collaboration with his wife, Carol Christensen, works by Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline, among others. He lives in Richmond, California.