FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“With their stress on metaphor and meaning, these vivid translations invite English readers to savor GóngoraÆs mastery of different lyric genres.… [Dent-Young’s] introductions and commentary illuminate many of the mythical allusions, formal considerations, and historical-cultural circumstances informing the poetry.”
Christopher Johnson, Harvard University

“Luis de Góngora was the James Joyce of his time, more labyrinthine in diction and allusion, more daring in the icy constellations of his mental and mythical metaphor.… [John Dent-Young’s] formal lyrical recasting of [de Góngora’s] Polifemo is an English masterpiece. A pioneer work.”
Willis Barnstone, Indiana University

Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora
A Bilingual Edition

Edited and Translated by John Dent-Young

Known as the “Spanish Homer,” Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561û1627) is widely considered to be Spain’s greatest poet. He was both praised and vilified during his lifetime, but his reputation waned in the years after his death; in the 1920s, he was championed by the Modernists, including Federico García Lorca, and influential critics of Spanish literature, including D´maso Alonso. Famous for intricate metaphors in baroque structure and syntax, Góngora has even been immortalized as a literary term: a “gongorism” connotes an involved Latinate style. Yet despite his influence and reputation, Góngora is not well known to English-speaking readers. Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora aims to change that.

Making the poet available to contemporary readers of poetry without denying him his historical context, Selected Poems of Luis de Gngora represents Góngora as master of many genres and a writer whose life and poetry are closely intertwined. John Dent-Young’s free translations capture Góngora’s intensely musical voice and transmit the individuality and self-assuredness of the poet. The first significant edition of this seminal and challenging poet in many years, Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora puts the Spanish master in his rightful place alongside other masters of the difficult, such as John Donne and Stéphane Mallarmé.

John Dent-Young is a freelance editor and translator who has also translated from Mandarin Chinese. He was a lecturer in English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for nearly twenty years.

 

John Dent-Young is available for interviews. For more information, please contact Stephanie Hlywak at (773) 702-0376 or shlywak@press.uchicago.edu