I: BACKGROUND Fundamental considerations THE field of Catalan lyric poetry is wide and varied, and its history has been a long one. This particular anthology was compiled in order to bring together its essentials rather than to provide a representative selection; my criterion was personal throughout, my choice being based upon my own reactions to the poems I read. When any poem succeeded in imposing its self-sufficiency upon me, then I felt that it had proved the perpetuation of its motive

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... . A poem at rest contains, just like a stone or a metal, latent energy which can be freed by the intervention of the reader. Once this has been released, its static framework should vanish, and its essence become as alive as it was when the poem was first composed. If any poem is to continue to be valid "poetry", then its powers of enchantment must persist in just that way. When properly approached such poems can resurrect their poets and revive a world which had seemed lost. A passion, a sorrow, silence -or a darting glance-come back into existence as they were at the moment when the poet abstracted them from reality to endow them with another, more enduring, life. That transfiguration was what I sought when making my selection, be-