Robert Lima
ROBERT LIMA, poet, critic, bibliographer, playwright and translator, is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Comparative Literatures at The Pennsylvania State University, as well as Fellow Emeritus of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies. He is an Academician of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española and a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia Española. He has been honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by Villanova University, inducted into the Enxebre Orden da Vieira in Spain and vested Knight Commander in the Order of Queen Isabel of Spain by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I.
Among his books are The Theatre of García Lorca (Las Américas, 1963), Ramón del Valle-Inclán (Columbia UP, 1972), An Annotated Bibliography of Valle-Inclán (Penn State U. Libraries, 1972), Dos ensayos sobre teatro español de los veinte (U. de Murcia, 1984), and Valle-Inclán. The Theatre of His Life (Missouri UP, 1988). He has translated Valle-Inclán's aesthetico-mystical treatise The Lamp of Marvels (Lindisfarne Press, 1986) and his selection of short dramas Savage Acts: Four Plays (Estreno, 1993). His most recent books are Dark Prisms. Occultism in Hispanic Drama (UP of Kentucky, 1995; also in paperback, 2009) and Valle-Inclán. El teatro de su vida (Editorial Nigra, Spain, 1995), Ramón del Valle-Inclán: An Annotated Bibliography (Grant & Cutler, 1999), The Dramatic World of Valle-Inclán (Boydell & Brewer, 2003), Stages of Evil. Occultism in Western Theatre and Drama (UP of Kentucky), published in 2005, and The International Bibliography of Studies on the Life and Works of Ramón del Valle-Inclán (2008). The Spanish version of Dark Prisms was published in 2010 in Madrid by Editorial Fundamentos.
He selected for publication, edited, and translated Barrenechea's Borges the Labyrinth Maker (NYU Press, 1965), the first critical study on Borges in English, as well as edited and contributed to Borges and the Esoteric, a special issue of Crítica Hispánica (Duquesne UP, 1993). He has published well over one hundred fifty articles in a variety of fields.
In 1974 he created "Surrealism--A Celebration," a multi-faceted event in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Surrealist Movement. Included were theatre productions, music concerts, films, displays of rare publications, paintings, sculpture, jewelry and other objects, presentations by leading art historians, artists, and literary critics. And a Surrealist banquet. Elements of these events appeared in a special 1975 issue of Journal of General Education, which he edited.
Over five hundred of his poems have appeared throughout the U.S. and abroad in periodicals, anthologies, and in his poetry collections Fathoms (1981), The Olde Ground (1985), Mayaland (1992), Sardinia / Sardegna (2000), Tracking the Minotaur (2003), The Pointing Bone (2008), The Rites of Stone (2010), Self (2012), and Por caminos errantes (2014). Poems of Exile and Alienation (with Teresinka Pereira, 1976), Corporal Works (1985), and CELESTIALS are three of his chapbooks.
He has been elected to membership in PEN International and the Poetry Society of America. From March through August 2004, Penn State University Libraries exhibited "The Poetic World of Robert Lima," a retrospective of his poetry career from 1955 to the present. The first poetry competition by Phi Kappa Phi was won by his poem “Astrals,” which appears in the honor society’s journal Forum.
His biography appears in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the East, World Who’s of Authors, and other creative writing directories in the U.S. and abroad.
L O R C A
Ojos que se quiebran
contra adoquines
de calles cenicientas
Raices del grito
en la burla de cacofonía
y escupitajo
Sintaxis de sonido
sin sentido cursivo
terrible en su extensión
y profundidad cavernosa
Llanto almado hacia noche
de carne rasgada
y corazón extirpado
Cabeza en vaivén
al impacto de cálido plomo,
arremetida enfática de bota,
el coup-de-grace
Ya no cuestión de
tiempo o sitio
Entrañas de tierra
empapadas de rojo,
sin lápida,
separadas de identidad
La soledad de jamás.
ROBERT LIMA
English 
Spanish
