In 1926, as a young man of 28 with a growing reputation as an oral poet, Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) toyed with the idea of proving his worth in writing by bringing out a boxed set of three volumes of his verse. Because the Suites, Canciones, and the Poema del cante jondo eventually came out singly (in the case of the Suites, posthumously), readers have not always realised that they formed a single body of work -- one which, Lorca himself was surprised to note, has 'una rarisima unidad', an odd unity of aims and accomplishment. This is poetry which takes up the question of desire in...

In this collection of 65 short poems, Roberta Quance exemplifies the range, vitality and inner mysticism of work by one of Spain's foremost, if controversial, contemporary female poets, drawing on the contents of a number of Spanish collections.