Enclosed Garden: (Jardin Cerrado)

Jardín cerrado / Enclosed Garden is a compilation in four books of the poetry that Emilio Prados wrote during the first years of his exile in Mexico, following the tragic conclusion of the Spanish Civil War. First published in 1946, the contents are lyric poems that originate in contemplative experience. The poems, approximately two hundred in all, are carefully arranged to form a set of series within series that moves like a wave through interrelated topoi: loss or exile, sleeping and dreaming, resurrection or a new sense of the self. The title reflects the garden theme of contemplative and romantic poetry, and the work is rich with allusion, beginning with “The Song of Solomon” and including such medieval works as The Romance of the Rose. Enclosed Garden also contains many references to Arabic poetry and mystical poetry like that of Juan de la Cruz. The collection is both compendium of lyric modes and spiritual autobiography. The theme of the “lost garden” echoes with Genesis as well as the poet’s exile from his beloved Andalusia. The images and energies of Enclosed Garden are deeply erotic as well as deeply spiritual, the meditations of a tormented man with little outlet for his emotions other than that found in writing with insistent and often explosive urgency.