Para su primer libro poético, Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) poda ramas y follaje de su frondoso árbol lírico, como él gustaba decir, y entrega a la imprenta la colección más amplia de las que publicó. El sentimental, vehemente, irónico LIBRO DE POEMAS (1921) registra los mundos de introspección del joven poeta con plasticidad metafórica y desgarrado acento elegíaco. La introducción a este volumen establece un sugestivo análisis biográfico del autor, mientras que un riguroso aparato de notas desenmaraña la compleja problemática de la edición de la poesía lorquiana.

In reading Lorca's first published book, Impresiones y paisajes, I got to experience his first baby steps as a writer. He travels around Spain and observes what he sees while on an extended field trip with his university class. His observations were thoughtful and surprisingly sophisticated for a teenager. I don't think I'm capable of expressing myself at 27 the way he did at 17. Now, after reading his second published book, Libro de poemas, I feel like I've experienced his coming of age as a poet. Here, he's putting the world in order, creating systems of poetic expression capable of representing both the world around him and the many worlds of his imaginative fancy, which come to greater prominence in Suites.

This is kind of a work in progress, because while I've read it once through, I'm currently going back and forth between it and Suites, looking for things that catch my eye that I might like to investigate in greater depth. I'm getting really excited about future García Lorca reads in the coming few months, and I'm hoping that my familiarity with his earliest published works will help me better understand the books of poems and plays that I'm preparing to read. I think I'll best be able to comment on this book in a few months, so maybe I'll come back to this review then. For now, I'll say that I appreciated this book because I started seeing certain repetitions of symbols (although not necessarily with fixed, static meanings) and it helped me get a better feel for Lorca's forms of poetic expression. I look forward to re-reading these poems soon. ( )