Invisible Reality

The great Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956, was a mystic as will as a poet, and the deep spirituality which infuses so much of his writing makes itself felt with special fervor throughout this remarkable new collection of poems. Composed by Jiménez between the years 1917 to 1920, the works in this grouping vanished mysteriously, only to be rediscovered a half-century later among the author’s private papers. Published in Spain for the first time in 1983, they appear now at last in a bilingual edition, the English lovingly rendered by the scholar and poet Antonio T. de Nicolás, and introduced by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louis Simpson. This is a book of verse for the poet in all of us—it sings of the invisible realities which we carry in our hearts and which carry us through a life filled with symbols, toil and beauty. Juan Ramón Jiménez, an early twentieth century pioneer in the use of free verse and author of over 70 books has been hailed by The New Republic as “not only the dean of Hispanic poets, but the pioneer and the source of all those who wrote in the Spanish tongue after him.” Antonio T. de Nicolás is widely known for his translation of the Jiménez classic, Platero and I, which will also be republished through iUniverse.com.