Poema del cante jondo and Romancero gitano, the books of poems that Lorca wrote first, out of his excited response to gypsy music, poetry, and dance all around him in Granada, contain some of his most powerful and trenchant lyrical work, original, inimitable, daring, and a clear expression of the duende, the Dionysian daemon in poetry, of which he wrote eloquently. A new, fresh, consistent translation—and Mr. Angel’s is all of these—is a welcome return to that wild dance, in this bilingual edition.

—W.S. Merwin