Lit&Lunch: Translator Stephen Kessler on Spanish Poet Luis Cernuda

A compatriot of Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda fled his native Spain after the great poet’s assassination, eventually ending up in Mexico, where he lived the rest of his life. Openly gay in a repressive nation, Cernuda wrote some of the most charged and challenging poetry of the 20th century.

Acclaimed translator Stephen Kessler discusses his translations of Cernuda’s poetry, which have won him a Lambda Literary Award, a nomination for a Northern California Book Award, and a 2010 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. He discusses Cernuda’s great themes–desire and love–and explains what made his avant-garde aesthetic so important.