Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Spanish by Arturo Mantecón. Introduction by Jack Hirschman. Leopoldo María Panero admits of himself that he is a "Communist, homosexual and paranoid schizophrenic"—who lives now in a mental hospital—an "outsider" poet of startling originality and sensuous impact. Arturo Mantecón's translations capture Panero's poetry with authenticity and sensivitity.

"What a revelation, what a discovery, what a gift to have these poems of Leopoldo Panero in such convincing English as Arturo Mantecón's. This is life-and-death poetry, prodigious imagination, language flirting with madness yet controlled, expression pushed to its limits in pursuit of unspeakable truths. A moving, profound, extraordinary book."—Stephen Kessler

Leopoldo Panero integrates instinct and emotion, intellect, humanity, and dream, often in lyrically gritty images, seductive in their multiple states of being. Imagine Panero as some odd Virgil, a guide knocking at the gates of a rising hell and a falling heaven, setting out with 'the amplitude of words' to pursue 'the mystery of that which names itself.' Arturo Mantecón lends focused sensibility and depth to the challenge of reconstructing Panero's 'mad' revelations, in all their beauty, precision, and grace."—William O'Daly

Author City: Canary Islands SPA

Leopoldo María Panero (b. 1948, Madrid) is perhaps the greatest living Spanish poet and the most significant one since García Lorca and Aleixandre, yet he has been virtually unknown to the Anglophone literary world. Born to wealth and privilege in Franco's Spain, Panero succumbed to mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction as a young man, and was subjected to electroshock therapy. He voluntarily chose to enter a mental hospital in the Canaary Islands, where has lived for the last 38 years.

Reviews and Other Links
finalist for the 31st Annual Northern California California Book Award for Poetry in Translation