Gongora was one of the great poets of European Baroque, a latinising intellectual who could also write easily and well in the popular modes and was a virtuoso encompassing many styles and many verse forms. The revival of his work in Spain this century roughly parallels the Donne revival in English Lorca was only one off the younger poets who paid him homage. A large percent age of the works Michael Smith has chosen are sonnets, some of them oblique and highly mannered, almost cryptic, while Gongora's more folkish vein is also well represented. The Spanish originals and the English versions are printed on facing pages, inviting the reader to participate in both.