Memory of the Fire

Justo Jorge Padrón is one of Spain's leading poets. Born in Las Palmas, Grand Canary Island, in 1943, he is among the most representative poets of the Spanish Generation of the 1970s. The brilliance of his metaphorical imagination provides the Spanish lyric tradition with an incisive, renovating power. Louis Bourne offers here a wide selection from Padrón's thirteen Spanish volumes since 1989 and since his last English collection, On the Cutting Edge (1988).

 

Justo Jorge Padrón studied law and liberal arts at the University of Barcelona. Since 1974, when he gave up work as a lawyer, he has devoted himself full-time to literature, winning numerous awards for his poetry. He lives in Madrid and also spends time in Las Palmas and his wife's homeland of Macedonia.

 

Louis Bourne was born in Virginia, USA in 1942. He did his doctorate in Spanish at New York University, lived for thirty-one years in Madrid and now teaches Spanish and world literature at Georgia College & State University. His other translations include works by Vicente Aleixandre, Maria Victoria Atencia and S. de la Nuez's anthology Contemporary Poetry from the Canary Islands (1992).