Desolation of the Chimera

Luis Cernuda (1902-1963) was a leading member of Spain's legendary Generation of 1927-Lorca, Alberti, Aleixandre, Guillen, Salinas, Bunuel, Dali, et al. He left Spain during the Civil War in 1938 and never returned, teaching first in Great Britain and then in Massachusetts before settling in Mexico in 1952. Stephen Kessler is a poet, translator, essayist and editor whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications across the United States since the late 1960s. He is the author of eight books and chapbooks of original poetry, most recently Burning Daylight (Littoral Press), and more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction in translation.

"In these memories and landscapes, in these notes toward the history of his sensibility, there is great objectivity: the poet doesn't set out to fantacize, or to lie to himself or anyone else. He attempts only to illuminate, with an almost impersonal ligh