Deeply admired by poets far more familiar to us, from Lorca to William Carlos Wi
lliams, the poems of Miguel Hernandez (1910-42), written in the midst of the sav
age 20th century, beam with a gentleness of heart. Hernandez was a self-educated
goatherd from the tiny Spanish town of Orihuela who tried hard to be accepted a
mong his older contemporaries. Lorca wrote to the young poet in 1933, telling hi
m to stop struggling to get along in a 'circle of literary pigs'.
