Returnings: Poems of Love and Distance

Winner of the 2016 Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation

"In Returnings, we are treated to an essay on the imaginative possibilities of a great poet, long exiled from his native land, turning memory into verse, recovering from the past everything that counts: love and friendship and the landscapes that shaped him. Through alleyways and storied ruins, colors and autumn and war, Alberti discovers poetry at every turn."—Christopher Merrill, prize judge

"The musical language that drives these urgent poems is echoed exquisitely in Carolyn Tipton's translations."—Stephen Kessler

Rafael Alberti was one of the greatest poets of twentieth-century Spain.

Poet and translator Carolyn L. Tipton teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.