Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Stanzas on the Death of His Father: Coplas a la muerte de su padre

Stanzas on the Death of His Father: Coplas a la muerte de su padre

Manrique, Jorge
McGuinness, Patrick
Hazbun, Geraldine

Paperback

Series: Shearsman Classics

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $18.00

ISBN10: 1848617720
ISBN13: 9781848617728
Publisher: Shearsman Books
Published: Jun 11 2021
Pages: 102
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.24 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

Coplas por la muerte de su padre by Jorge Manrique (c.1440-79) is one of the most celebrated poems in the Spanish language. Written shortly before the poet's death, it is a dignified elegy that speaks not just of a personal loss, that of the poet's father Rodrigo Manrique (d.1476), but of the evanescence of all things sub specie aeternitatis. Its popularity is aided by memorable lines, not least the two opening metaphors: man's life is a river meandering unto the sea of death (st. 3), and this world is the road to the next, the lasting dwelling place (st. 5). The poem replicates these reflections in its wending form. Its forty stanzas each comprise four tercets; each tercet is made up of two longer octosyllabic verses combined with one four-syllable half line known as pie quebrado. These regular broken lines, like beats of a heart, invest the poem with a resonant quality befitting the injunction at the opening of the poem to awaken one's slumbering soul to the passage of time: 'Recuerde el alma dormida, avive el seso e despierte' (st. 1).

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