title: A Longing for the Light
author: Vincente Aleixandre
description: After Love<br /> At The Bottom Of The Well: The Buried Man<br /> Bent Time<br /> Between Two Nighttimes, Lightning<br /> Blood<br /> The Body And The Soul<br /> The Boy And The Man<br /> The Bull<br /> City Of Paradise<br /> The Class<br /> Close To Death<br /> Closed<br /> Come Always, Come<br /> The Comet<br /> Doesn't Know<br /> The Dream<br /> The Eagles<br /> The Ear - The Word<br /> The Explosion<br /> Final Look: Death And Recognition<br /> Guitar Or Moon<br /> The Hands<br /> Her Hand Given Over<br /> Human Matter<br /> I Am Destiny<br /> If Someone Could Have Told Me<br /> The Immortals: 1. Rain<br /> The Immortals: 2. Sun<br /> The Immortals: 3. Word<br /> The Immortals: 4. Earth<br /> The Immortals: 5. Fire<br /> The Immortals: 6. Air<br /> The Immortals: 7. Sea<br /> In The Square<br /> It's Raining<br /> The Jungle And The Sea<br /> Life<br /> Lightless<br /> The Limit<br /> Love Poem<br /> Man Doesn't Exist<br /> The Man On His Death Bed: 1. Words<br /> The Man On His Death Bed: 2. The Silence<br /> Mother, Mother<br /> My Grandfather's Death<br /> My Voice<br /> The Old And The Young<br /> The Old Man And The Sun<br /> The Old Man Is Like Moses<br /> On The Death Of Miguel Hernandez<br /> On The Way To School<br /> The Poet<br /> Sea And Night<br /> Sea And Sunrise<br /> Song To A Dead Girl<br /> Sound Of The War<br /> To My Dog<br /> Tragic Destiny<br /> The Tree<br /> Under The Ground<br /> The Usual<br /> The Victorious Sun<br /> Vision Of Youth From Other Years<br /> The Visitor<br /> The Waltz<br /> We Feed On Shadow<br /> What Happens To All Flesh<br /> What Is Forgotten<br /> Who I Write For<br /> Wholeness Within Her<br /> With All Due Respect<br /> The Years<br /> -- <i>Table of Poems from <a href="/exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/poemfinder.html/${0}">Poem Finder</a></i><br /><br />This bilingual collection of 68 poems and two prose pieces surveys fifty years of the 1977 Nobel Prize winning poet's work. In addition, the book includes Lewis Hyde's introduction and a descriptive bibliography containing Aleixandre's own comments on each of his books, taken from their prefaces. Divided into five sections to represent different phases of the poet's writing, arranged chronologically, the poems reflect quite a range to the talent, from the early prose poems to the recent dramatic poems, from the hermetic and surrealistic to the perhaps most occasional, "On the Death of Miguel Hernandez," ("Don't Touch him. None of you could. He knew,/ only he knew,") to love poems like "It's Raining": "This evening it's raining, and my picture of you is raining. The day falls open in memory. You walked in. / I can't hear. Memory gives me nothing but your picture. / There only your kiss or the rain is falling." The translations, by Hyde along with 14 other translators, at their best manage to capture the sharp images and intellect of this amazing, renowned poet, who, at age 88, continues to write. This edition, the first paperback printing of the 1979 Harper and Row cloth edition (now out of print) is the only book of Aleixandre's poetry available in English currently. Highly recommended for all collections. -- <i>From <a href="/exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/independent-pub.html/${0}">Independent Publisher</a></i>
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  In loving memory of Pierre-Emmanuel (1989-2006)
  
  
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  Why Noirmoutier? he wondered as the car sped on and Melanie hummed to "Let It
  Be." He had never considered himself a nostalgic person. He had never looked
  back. But since his divorce he had changed. Relentlessly he had found himself
  thinking more about the past than the present or the future. The weight of the
  past year, his first year alone, that dreary, solitary year, had sparked off
  pangs of regret, longing for his childhood, striving for happy memories. That
  was how the island had come back to him, timidly at first, then more
  powerfully and more precisely as the memories came tumbling in like mail
  gathering in a box.
  
  His grandparents, regal and white-haired--Blanche with her parasol and Robert
  with his silver cigarette box that never left him, sitting on the shadowy
  hotel veranda and dr