About the Author

Luis Hernandez (1941-77) was a Peruvian poet who published three books during his short life. Anthony Geist is professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Washington. He is the author of numerous studies and translations of contemporary Spanish and Latin American poetry.

Reviews

"The School of Solitude: Collected Poems. . .[is] a refreshing experience for Spanish readers and now made available to English readers, thanks to Anthony Geist's clever translations. The collection, placed in side-by-side bilingual format and with notebook illustrations included, allows a new generation of English and Spanish readers to relish in this impressive poetic and translation endeavor. . . The notebook pages spatially shape the discontinuities in Hern�ndez's writing, and Geist's translations also invite the reader to play with the whiteness of the page that the English translation hinges on for a more enriching reading experience. . . Through Hern�ndez's poetry and Geist's translation, English and Spanish become a much more fluid and playful duet of linguistic, musical, and cultural exchange between North America, Western Europe, and South America. This translated work offers a notable contribution of re-writing and re-configuring the 1960s generation of counterculture writers and artists, which irrevocably is provoked, played with, and challenged by the work of the Peruvian poet, Luis (Lucho) Hern�ndez."
-- "Mester"

"Anthony Geist renders the poetry-reading world an immense service in plucking the mercurial Peruvian writer Luis Hern�ndez (1941-77) from English-language obscurity with the publication of The School of Solitude."--Gregary J. Racz "Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas"

"Distributed throughout The School of Solitude are photocopies of Hern�ndez's handwritten poems and drawings, all done on lined school notebooks. They provide a sense of the physical form of the poem's original renderings, as well as Hern�ndez's free, unconventional spirit. Luis Hern�ndez believed not only in challenging and complicating poetic conventions within his work; he conducted his entire life as an expression of this belief. With this publication of Anthony Geist's excellent translation of The School of Solitude, Swan Isle Press has presented a great gift to English reading public. We should receive these poems with the same warmth and joy as did those friends, family members, poets, and strangers to whom they were originally given."--Mike Puican "Make Magazine"