Finding Duende

Reviews / Votes

"Finding Duende presents, in English and Spanish, the most complete and accurate versions so far possible of both "Duende: Play and Theory" (as it is titled here) and an earlier lecture, 'Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion.' . . . According to one of Maurer and Leon's many rich footnotes, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote that Lorca 'had one obsession. Do not bore the audience. He never did.' He does not here. Nor does this beautifully designed volume, which offers the pleasure of ten color illustrations (photographs, manuscript and typescript pages, and several drawings by Lorca) alongside the bilingual texts of both talks and essays by each of the editors. All are full of provocation and delight for poets and readers." * RHINO Reviews * "This beautifully produced bilingual edition pairs Federico Garcia Lorca's lecture from 1993 on the demonic, rapturous spirit of duende with an equally enigmatic earlier lecture, "Imagination, inspiration, evasion." While the former has been vulnerable to misinterpretation and mistranslation, the latter has been almost entirely neglected. No complete copy of the autograph manuscript exists, but Finding Duende includes a collation of fragments from archived accounts, providing an invaluable understanding of Lorca's evolving poetics at a moment of 'emotional and aesthetic rupture.'" * The Times Literary Supplement * "For many of my generation of poets & readers (& beyond), Lorca was & remains a radical & necessary voice-the poems foremost but linked by him to the creation or extension of a new/old poetics, drawing from a presumed folk & popular tradition, centered on the word 'duende' as a poetry of 'black sounds' & 'demonic' energies, both in writing & performance. It is this yearning to have duende, or be possessed by it, that this book allows us to view as Lorca presented it in several groundbreaking lectures: compact but rich enough to create a Spanish ethnopoetics or a still greater & deeper poetics for the world-at-large. What Jose Javier Leon & Christopher Maurer give us here is crucial to our renewed sense of where poetry, however made or enacted, can still take us. In that sense, remarkable." * Jerome Rothenberg, professor emeritus at the University of California-San Diego, renowned poet, anthologist, performance artist, critic, scholar, and author of Gematria Complete and Concealments & Caprichos * "In your hands is the definitive bilingual edition of what is perhaps the most enigmatic text of Federico Garcia Lorca, the greatest poet of the 20th century in the Spanish language. Once again, the word of Christopher Maurer has illuminated the work of the great Federico, and Jose Javier Leon accompanies us on Lorca's path toward 'depths of the blood.' At a time when for many people the idea of poetry has become ever more banal, the recovery of this text, 'Juego y teoria del duende,' in this exquisite edition is cause for celebration for poetry lovers. The duende could not be in better hands." * Fernando Valverde, associate professor of Spanish and Poetry at University of Virginia, award-winning author of America * "Finding Duende should be required reading for anyone contemplating using the slippery term in speech or in print. Although addressed primarily to a broad, English-speaking audience, it should not be neglected by more specialized Hispanists, who will find much of interest and profit here. Furthermore, the two lectures, whether in Spanish or in English, should henceforth be quoted from this volume, as their texts clearly surpass all others in rigour and reliability." * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *