15.1.08

New School faculty collaborate on new translation of Lorca's Poet in New York

Mark Statman and Pablo Medina, associate professors of writing at Eugene Lang College the New School for Liberal Arts have collaborated on a new translation of Federico Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York.

I picked up a copy of Christopher Maurer 's 1998 translation of Lorca's masterpiece when I first started attending classes at Columbia University a couple of years ago and I couldn't help but feel a deep kinship with Lorca, who wrote Poet in New York while attending Columbia in 1929-30.

Being an outsider in the US myself, I can relate to Lorca's sense of awe, isolation, and alienation when faced with the behemoth that is New York. Still, despite the book's dark imagery, I still find solace in Lorca's descriptions of the city's terrible beauty.

It'll be interesting to see how Statman and Medina's translation holds up to Maurer's translation.

More here and here.

2 comments:

Mark Statman said...

Hi Greg,

I'm interested in your response to the translation.

best,

Mark Statman

Greg Santos said...

Mark,

When I get a chance to read it, I'll be sure to let you know. Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Greg