This week in Advanced Spanish, students are using a new list of vocabulary words to examine some of the highlights and complications of an urban lifestyle. Think “multiculturalismo,” “contaminación,” and “deshumanización”. This work will prepare the class to soon jump into “Poeta en Nueva York”, a book of poems composed by the young Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, during the year that he spent studying at New York’s Columbia University in the years 1929/1930.

García Lorca’s visit to New York coincided with an enormously challenging financial crisis and the Stock Market crash of 1929, and students will find this anguish reflected in his work. “Poeta en Nueva York” can be seen as a surrealist portrayal of the external, urban inhumanity and internal sense of isolation and confusion that Garcia Lorca experienced during his visit to NY. We will read some poems from this work to get a sense of surrealist imagery in Spanish, and students will be asked to rewrite a poem of their choosing to reflect a variety of different tones and moods.

Bill Kearney,
Spanish Teacher/Dean of College Counseling