One of Spain's great twentieth-century poets, who spent his life in the pursuit of "the hard prize of a few bare words", Salvador Espriu viewed his nine major books of poetry as a single meditation on the tragedy of war. In his spare, rarely rhymed verse, the simplest words are burnished to an elemental power: the words of landscape, the elements, death itself. Unlike so many poets of his generation, Espriu did not seek exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War. However, choosing to remain in Spain, and by writing in a forbidden tongue - Catalan was outlawed under Franco - Espriu became an exile in his own home. The astonishing strength and beauty of his poetry derives from his unswerving sense of mission: to bear witness to his time, and to "hold the ground" for Catalan, the language he called "mysterious gold".
- ISBN10 1555971121
- ISBN13 9781555971120
- Publish Date February 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 March 1996
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Graywolf Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 160
- Language English