Overview

A groundbreaking reassessment of the relationship between Federico García Lorca and American poet Philip Cummings and its impact on the poems in Lorca's landmark collection, Poet in New York. In August 1929, Spanish poet Federico García Lorca left New York City to spend ten days with his friend and lover Philip Cummings at a lakeside cottage in northern Vermont. Lorca in Vermont tells the story of two young men with mismatched goals and expectations: Lorca, already well established in his career, who sought a sustained romantic relationship with another man, and Cummings, a new college graduate eight years his junior, who had no interest in long-term commitment or in challenging social conventions. Based on over a decade of research, Lorca in Vermont explores the full course of Lorca’s relationship with Cummings, an affair that spanned three years and two continents. Combining unique access to primary sources, extensive original research, and a fresh analysis of published sources, the book describes not only the pair’s history as a couple but also the suppression of their relationship by Lorca scholars after the poet’s tragic death in 1936. Perhaps most importantly, it reveals previously unrecognized links between the disappointment and loss Lorca experienced in his relationship with Cummings and at least eight of the poems in his landmark collection Poet in New York, a work that has long intrigued and inspired other writers. The book brilliantly blends compelling new findings and an engaging narrative style in a page-turning tale that is a must read for anyone interested in Lorca and his legacy.

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9780826369352

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Reviews

“Patricia Billingsley’s book artfully explores a little-known aspect of Federico Garcia Lorca’s life. Her work provides a much-needed analysis of the relationship between Lorca’s personal life and his poetry, especially during the formative time he spent in New York and New England. This is a welcome and intriguing contribution to the critical literature on Lorca as well as to the literary history of the LGBTQ community of the early twentieth century.” -- Velma García-Gordena, editor and translator of <I>Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana</I> “The story of Lorca’s 1929 visit to Vermont to see his friend Philip Cummings is a key episode in the poet’s biography that has never been told in full. Patricia Billingsley fleshes out the relationship between the two men with a keen eye for detail.” -- Jonathan Mayhew, author of <I>Lorca’s Legacy: Essays in Interpretation</I> “With details providing the look, sound, and feel of Lake Eden, Vermont, Billingsley weaves together the context and interactions of Lorca and Cummings’s time together, ultimately showing how these intense experiences inspired some of the poems in Poet in New York. This fascinating and meticulously researched biography will leave people wanting to read more about Lorca’s art and life.” -- Celia Stahr, author of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist “Over ten years in the making, Patricia Billingsley’s Lorca in Vermont burrows deep into a brief and overlooked moment in Federico García Lorca’s life, revealing long-hidden secrets as alluring and unforgettable as the Spaniard’s beloved poetry. While steeped in the past, this is a book skillfully written for the present.” -- Aaron Shulman, author of <I>The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War</I> “Though Federico García Lorca’s work and life have been the subject of enough books and articles to fill a small library, little has been written about his brief but significant stay in Vermont and his relationship with Philip Cummings, his American lover. Until now, that is. Patricia Billingsley’s thoroughly researched and beautifully written Lorca in Vermont fills that void. Billingsley writes powerfully about Lorca’s ambivalence about his sexuality, his encounter with Cummings, and their subsequent stay in a cabin in Lake Eden, Vermont, which inspired Lorca to write a series of poems later collected in his masterpiece, Poet in New York. Billingsley’s Lorca in Vermont is biographically revealing and narratively irresistible.” -- Pablo Medina, cotranslator of the Grove Press edition of <I>Poet in New York</I> “The extensive and groundbreaking research that Billingsley has conducted into Lorca’s relationship with Cummings and Vermont, and its subsequent importance in his poetry, provides a valuable contribution to Lorca scholarship.” -- Andrew Samuel Walsh, author of <I>Lorca in English: A History of Manipulation Through Translation</I> “Patricia Billingsley’s gripping, carefully reconstructed account of the intimacy that flared up between these two poets enriches our sense of the past and shows us an extended moment of tenderness in a long-suppressed episode that will fascinate poets and lovers while becoming required reading for any subsequent study of Lorca. Billingsley has mastered this material—not only the details of the affair but also the history of its suppression at the hands of academics and biographers. In this clear-eyed narrative, she allows us to savor a prolonged moment when these two promising poets were allowed to be themselves.” -- Daniel Bullen, author of <I>The Love Lives of the Artists: Five Stories of Creative Intimacy</I> “Patricia Billingsley’s secret history involving an unknown American and an icon of Spanish poetry represents an act of biography at its finest. The long-suppressed story of Federico García Lorca and an aspiring poet named Philip Cummings travels from Madrid to New York to, of all places, Vermont. Lorca in Vermont reveals passions and literary source material that will fascinate and surprise even seasoned readers of García Lorca’s cherished works.” -- Steve Paul, author of <I>Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell</I> “When I was in college and learned about the poetry of García Lorca and even attended a college production of one of his plays, no one told me that he was gay. Even when I learned he was a foe of the fascist Franco and was murdered during the Spanish Civil War, no one told me that his reputation as ‘queer’ was part of the narrative. One of the goals of the gay liberation movement, early on, was to end the stifling ‘closet’—the silence and invisibility and even the lies—and Billingsley’s vital research continues that endeavor. The publishing world should welcome it.” -- Allen Young, author of <I>Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life</I> “Lorca in Vermont is poised to take its distinguished place among recent biographies of same-sex literary couples whose lives had to be carefully guarded because of societal prejudice.” -- Carl Rollyson, author of The Making of Sylvia Plath

“The story of Lorca’s 1929 visit to Vermont to see his friend Philip Cummings is a key episode in the poet’s biography that has never been told in full. Patricia Billingsley fleshes out the relationship between the two men with a keen eye for detail.” -- Jonathan Mayhew, author of <I>Lorca’s Legacy: Essays in Interpretation</I> “With details providing the look, sound, and feel of Lake Eden, Vermont, Billingsley weaves together the context and interactions of Lorca and Cummings’s time together, ultimately showing how these intense experiences inspired some of the poems in Poet in New York. This fascinating and meticulously researched biography will leave people wanting to read more about Lorca’s art and life.” -- Celia Stahr, author of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist “Over ten years in the making, Patricia Billingsley’s Lorca in Vermont burrows deep into a brief and overlooked moment in Federico García Lorca’s life, revealing long-hidden secrets as alluring and unforgettable as the Spaniard’s beloved poetry. While steeped in the past, this is a book skillfully written for the present.” -- Aaron Shulman, author of <I>The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War</I> “Though Federico García Lorca’s work and life have been the subject of enough books and articles to fill a small library, little has been written about his brief but significant stay in Vermont and his relationship with Philip Cummings, his American lover. Until now, that is. Patricia Billingsley’s thoroughly researched and beautifully written Lorca in Vermont fills that void. Billingsley writes powerfully about Lorca’s ambivalence about his sexuality, his encounter with Cummings, and their subsequent stay in a cabin in Lake Eden, Vermont, which inspired Lorca to write a series of poems later collected in his masterpiece, Poet in New York. Billingsley’s Lorca in Vermont is biographically revealing and narratively irresistible.” -- Pablo Medina, cotranslator of the Grove Press edition of <I>Poet in New York</I> “The extensive and groundbreaking research that Billingsley has conducted into Lorca’s relationship with Cummings and Vermont, and its subsequent importance in his poetry, provides a valuable contribution to Lorca scholarship.” -- Andrew Samuel Walsh, author of <I>Lorca in English: A History of Manipulation Through Translation</I> “Patricia Billingsley’s gripping, carefully reconstructed account of the intimacy that flared up between these two poets enriches our sense of the past and shows us an extended moment of tenderness in a long-suppressed episode that will fascinate poets and lovers while becoming required reading for any subsequent study of Lorca. Billingsley has mastered this material—not only the details of the affair but also the history of its suppression at the hands of academics and biographers. In this clear-eyed narrative, she allows us to savor a prolonged moment when these two promising poets were allowed to be themselves.” -- Daniel Bullen, author of <I>The Love Lives of the Artists: Five Stories of Creative Intimacy</I> “Patricia Billingsley’s secret history involving an unknown American and an icon of Spanish poetry represents an act of biography at its finest. The long-suppressed story of Federico García Lorca and an aspiring poet named Philip Cummings travels from Madrid to New York to, of all places, Vermont. Lorca in Vermont reveals passions and literary source material that will fascinate and surprise even seasoned readers of García Lorca’s cherished works.” -- Steve Paul, author of <I>Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell</I> “When I was in college and learned about the poetry of García Lorca and even attended a college production of one of his plays, no one told me that he was gay. Even when I learned he was a foe of the fascist Franco and was murdered during the Spanish Civil War, no one told me that his reputation as ‘queer’ was part of the narrative. One of the goals of the gay liberation movement, early on, was to end the stifling ‘closet’—the silence and invisibility and even the lies—and Billingsley’s vital research continues that endeavor. The publishing world should welcome it.” -- Allen Young, author of <I>Left, Gay & Green: A Writer’s Life</I> “Lorca in Vermont is poised to take its distinguished place among recent biographies of same-sex literary couples whose lives had to be carefully guarded because of societal prejudice.” -- Carl Rollyson, author of The Making of Sylvia Plath

Author Information

Patricia A. Billingsley is an independent researcher and biographer with a special interest in poets and writers of the early twentieth century. She divides her time between Delaware and western Massachusetts and maintains close ties to the Vermont region where Lorca and Cummings created their own private Eden in August 1929.

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