This is a dual Spanish / English language edition of Lorca’s first major work, Poem of the Deep Song (Poema Del Cante Jondo), originally written in 1921 when the poet was 23 years old. It is a collection of around fifty individual poems, with many of them grouped together into larger themed works.

Here Lorca seeks to preserve the cultural heritage of Andalusian Deep Song – a musical tradition originating in 15th Century Spain with the Gypsies, through stretching back to much earlier roots that he variously identifies with Arabic, Sephardic, Byzantine, and early Spanish folk song. As such the Gypsy musical tradition of the Deep song is an historically and culturally rich phenomenon. Though it is preserved to some degree in Flamenco, the Deep Song tradition is an older predecessor, that is considered purer and more serious in its expression.
It is also an emotionally rich tradition too, and Lorca presents here in all their dark beauty the recurrent themes of the Gipsy Deep Song tradition: unrequited love, death, dancing, suffering, longing, angst, stabbings, and the Andalucian landscape and way of life. Though the exact musical rhythms of the Deep Song types, (saetas, soleares, and siguiriyas) cannot be carried through in written words alone, he uses the structure of these as bases for the various poems here.

For anyone interested in reading the works of Lorca this is a good place to start. The themes he is interested in here reappear in varying intensities in his later works from other parts of Spain, Andalucia, in New York, and in his Moorish-Andalusian inspired collection of the Tamarit Divan. Take this collection with you to Andalusia and read it there, the sun will feel brighter, the shadows deeper, the wine will appear as blood, and the olives will taste of bitter weeping. ( )

Parallel text rocks my world. It has been difficult for me to find Lorca's work with parallel translations. This edition is wonderful and abuela approved. ( )

This early volume by Lorca is, as the title suggests, a poetic tribute to the Andalusian folk music style of cante jondo. Though a focused attempt at preserving a fading cultural heritage, the collection remains emblematic of the poet's style; focused heavily on sorrow, death, and loss. Bauer's translation adequately preserves the lyricism of the original poems, if not their musicality. I prefer these translations over those I have read in The Complete Poems. ( )