Poet in Andalucia

by Nathalie Handal

Overview

Frederico Garcia lived in Manhattan from 1929 to 1930, and the poetry he wrote about the city, Poet in New York, was posthumously published in 1940. Eighty years after Lorca's sojourn to America, Nathalie Handal, a poet from New York, went to Spain to write Poet in Andalucia. Handal recreated Lorca's journey in reverse.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822978374
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	01/29/2012
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	532 KB

About the Author

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Her recent poetry books include the flash collection The Republics, winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing, and the Arab American Book Award; critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía; and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award. She is the author of eight plays, editor of two anthologies, and her poetry, essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from The Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, Emily Harvey Foundation, among others. Her work brings her to audiences globally. She is a professor at Columbia University, and writes the literary travel column “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders magazine.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface I. Poems of Soledad con Biznagas in Málaga Ojalá Walking to the Alcázar The Wounded Horse and a Tree in an Old Night Gypsy with a Song Tomás Heredia, 8 Biznagas II. Maktoub, the Moor Said El País Tree of Red Leaves, Jaén 2009 Paraguas Perdido The Courtyard of Colegiata del Salvador Sacromonte The Moor III. Alleys and Reveries Christmas in Benalmádena On the Way to Jerez de la Frontera The Thing about Feathers Now That Prophet in Andalucía IV. Constelación en el Ateneo de Sevilla Seven Stars in Sevilla V. In Córdoba Alhandal y las Murallas de Córdoba 10 Qit’as Patios VI. By the Door, or Is It Death Dado La Guerra While Waiting for Death VII. Granada Sheets of Dry Wind Granada Sings Whitman VIII. Convivencia Awon / Sin Convivencia / Two Ghazals Two Tzvis Abásho The Book of Toledo IX. Flight to Catalunya and Afternoons in Galicia Testament in Barcelona Quartet in Catalunya Waltz of a Dream Santiago X. The Poet Arrives in Tangier and Afterward Tanger Bleu La Movida The Traveler On My Way to Tamarit Notes and Memories Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Handal’s newest collection is an ambitious work that looks back at Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s 1940 classic, Poet in New York. Handal says she recreates “Lorca’s journey in reverse,” by narrating her journey through Spain. Accompanied by comprehensive clarifying notes and a travelogue, Handal’s collection resonates with a scholarly understanding of Spain’s religious and linguistic influences. Sometimes the poems are dialogues with Lorca and other past Spanish literary luminaries; other times, Handal is haunted by their influence. “Everything we hear/ is the echo of a voice we can’t hear,/ everything we see/ the reflection of something we can’t see.” Ruins, landscapes, and Spanish architecture fascinate Handal. “When we leave home/ we never stop looking for/ images of the land on our faces/ (These words were written on a wall by the Mexquita del Cristo de la Luz),” she writes. Arabic, Spanish, Ladino Catalan, and fragments of other languages are woven together as the poems muse over borders between where one voice or language ends and another begins: “Tell me, what are borders?” Handal asks in her segmented poem, “Qit’as,” which translates to “fragments.” She continues in another section of the same poem, “we gave birth/ in languages not our own,/ we wanted to hang/ their photos/ but/ there were/ no walls.” (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Poems of depth and weight, and the sorrowing song of longing and resolve.”
—Alice Walker

“Nathalie Handal’s brilliant new volume of poetry, Poet in Andalucía—about Spain, about the Middle East, about shared destinies and hopes—touches me deeply: it reminds us of what’s inconsolable, of what’s multiple, of what’s irreducible, and what’s simultaneous.”
—Rattapallax Magazine

“If writing draws us closer to the Other, a voice so lucid as that of Nathalie Handal becomes a necessity. A perspective such as hers allows for interpreting what transforms, remains, and unites. Poet in Andalucía will be one of the most talked about poetry books of 2012 and beyond.”
—Yolanda Castaño

“Love and Strange Horses . . . trembles with belonging (and longing).”
—New York Times

"Handal’s newest collection is an ambitious work that looks back at Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s 1940 classic, Poet in New York. Handal says she recreates “Lorca’s journey in reverse,” by narrating her journey through Spain. Accompanied by comprehensive clarifying notes and a travelogue, Handal’s collection resonates with a scholarly understanding of Spain’s religious and linguistic influences."
—Publishers Weekly

“This cosmopolitan voice belongs to the human family, and it luxuriates in crossing necessary borders.”
—Yusef Komunyakaa on Love and Strange Horses

“Her work is a brilliant elegance.”
—Afaa Michael Weaver

“These poems make a beautiful reality for the poet, and for us, which is truer than mortar and brick. It’s with startling force that Handal builds an architecture for the wanderer, and so makes true the belief that the life of the mind may be a waking dream but it’s the place we finally live. In her displacement, Handal’s inward tone is of grieving, but the consequence of writing about it, and writing with such fervor, is that cities are created where we can visit.”
—Exemplars

From the Publisher