Selected Poems - Tapa blanda

Born in Seville in 1902, LUIS CERNUDA was part of what came to be known in Spain as the Generation of 1927, which included Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and Vicente Aleixandre. Of these poets, Cernuda was the most cosmopolitan, totally familiar with European and American literary traditions. It was he who introduced the work of more recent English and American poets into Spanish poetry.

LUIS CERNUDA (1902-1963) has come to be seen as the most influential poet of Spain's "Generation of 1927," exceeding even Lorca in terms of the poetic resources and ideas that he created for poets of later generations. Because of the Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War, Cernuda went into exile from Spain in 1939 and lived in Scotland, England, the USA, and Mexico, where he joined several other Spanish poets in a small community in exile.

REGINALD GIBBONS is the author of eight books of poems, most recently Creatures of a Day, and several works of translation from ancient Greek and from Spanish.