Learning to howl: Selected poems of Maria Beneyto

Abstract

Maria Beneyto (València, 1920–2000) stands as one of the most significant Valencian writers of the 20th century. ‘Learning to Howl’, the English translation of forty-nine poems spanning her work from 1952 to 2003, introduces her remarkable Valencian voice to Anglophone readers. As Professor Candelas Gala observes in her introduction, the title—selected by translator Paul Scott Derrick—captures the very essence of Beneyto’s poetics. For her, “howling” becomes the necessary response to life’s betrayals: those imposed by sociopolitical and historical forces, by the distortions of language itself, and, ultimately, by the impenetrable wall of death.