My Voice Because of You - Tapa dura

Pedro Salinas (1891–1951) was born in Madrid, and, like his life-long friend Jorge Guillén, was a poet, professor, scholar, and critic. After teaching at Seville, the Sorbonne, and elsewhere in Europe, he came to the United States in 1936 to teach at Wellesley College. He also taught at Middlebury, and the last years of his life were spent at the Johns Hopkins University.

Salinas’ Poesías completas appeared in 1971, an edition containing nine volumes of poems as well as some early and late work. He also wrote several prose sketches, a novel, short stories, plays, critical editions, translations, and seven volumes of essays and criticism. He died in Boston in 1951.

Willis Barnstone is Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. He has published several books of poetry, including A Day in the Country, From This White Island (A Pulitzer nominee), and China Poems, and has translated books of Sappho, Greek lyric poetry, Mao Tse-tung, Saint John of the Cross, and Antonio Machado. He is currently completing a volume on Jorge Luis Borges and a translation of the Spanish mystic Fray Luis de León.