A la vera tuya To your side no puedo volver . . . I cannot return Como por unas palabritas locas How is it for some crazy words
se pierde un querer! such love is gone!

Although flamenco music enjoys wide popularity, the words of the songs are often lost in the passion of the performance, or because they are sung in dialect. This illustrated book brings together a sampling of the striking imagery and emotional purity that inspired Federico Garcìa Lorca and his generation of Spanish poets. Providing context for these lyrics are photographs and drawings, excerpts from letters, descriptions of first-hand experiences at spontaneous performances, and commentaries on Gypsy cante by noted poets, musicians, and philosophers.

Lorca wrote, "It is wondrous and strange how in just three or four lines the anonymous, and never published, poet can condense all the highest emotional moments of human life. There is much more mystery in these two lines than in all the plays of Maeterlink. Simple, genuine mystery, clean and sound, without gloomy forests or rudderless ships:

Cerco tiene la luna There’s a halo round the moon
mi amor ha muerto. My love has died."

Will Kirkand is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and translator whose translated works include Lorca’s The Gypsy Ballads and Rómulo Gallegos’ classic novel Canaima. He is the author of a volume of short stories, Ixat Tales