Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre won the Nobel Prize of 1977 for literature. Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo received it at 79 years of age. At the time, people barely knew him with just two available small editions in English translation. Two years later, in 1979, Harper and Row brought out bilingual edition of Lewis Hyde of selected poems of Aleixandre, A Longing for the Light . When people left the book to go out print, Copper Canyon published a paperback edition in 1985. Express Books noted in an article on Aleixandre, “A Longing for the Light remains the only readable collection of Aleixandre’s poetry available.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicente...

Luis Cernuda was a Spanish poet and literary critic. The son of a military man, Cernuda received a strict education as a child, and then studied law at the University of Seville, where he met the poet and literature professor Pedro Salinas. In 1928, after his mother died, Cernuda left his hometown, with which he had all his life an intense love-hate relationship. He briefly moved to Madrid, where he quickly became part of the literary scene. However, his detached, timid and morose character, his search of perfection frequently made him lose friendships and popularity. His mentor and former professor Salinas arranged for him to take a lectureship for a year at the University of Toulouse. From June 1929 until 1937 Cernuda lived in Madrid and participated actively in the literary and cultural scene of the Spanish capital. Cernuda collaborated with many organisations working to support a more liberal and tolerant Spain. He participated in the Second Congress of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals in Valencia. During the Spanish Civil War a friend secured him a position as teacher in Cranleigh School, where he taught Spanish Language and literature. After WWII another friend got him a lectureship in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA, where he would spend some years. Later on, moved by his sentimental relationships, he would move to Mexico, where he died. The central concerns of this poet are evident in the title of his life's major opus: La realidad y el deseo ("Reality and Desire"). He published his first collection of verse, Perfil del aire ("Air's profile"), in 1927. Several books followed, and he collected new and already published poetry under this title in 1936. Subsequent editions would include new poetry as new books inside La realidad y el deseo. Expanded on almost until his death in 1963, in this work the poet explores desire, love, subject, object, history and sexuality in poems which draw influences from romanticism, classicism, and the surrealist avant-garde. Besides verse, he also published a collection of reminiscent prose poems, 'Ocnos', about his childhood in Seville. Cernuda is known as a member of the Generation of '27, a group of Spanish poets and artists including Federico García Lorca. He broke new ground with Los Placeres Prohibidos ("Forbidden Pleasures"), an avant-garde work in which the poet used surrealism to explore his sexuality. During his British period he became deeply familiar with English poetry, which he would admire for its containment and lack of superfluous artifice and paraphernalia. He would also translate several poems and plays into Spanish. He would comment that translating Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida made him intensely happy. Deeply influenced by André Gide, Cernuda embraced his homosexuality at an early age and made homosexual desire and love the core of his poetry. Or, at least, unlike other gay poets at the time, in his poetry he was never ambiguous about the fact that the objects of his desire and love were men. One of the most influential poets in contemporary Spanish poetry, he is definitely a crucial ground-breaking figure for homosexual writing in Spanish. During the Spanish Civil War, deeply moved by the assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca, Cernuda fled to England, where he began an exile that later took him to France, Scotland, Massachusetts (Mount Holyoke College), California and finally settling in Mexico; he never returned to Spain. He never married and had no children. His major English language critics include Derek Harris and Phillip Silver.

Rafael Alberti Merello (December 16, 1902 - October 28, 1999) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. Alberti published his first books of poetry towards the end of the 1920s: Marinero en tierra ('Sailor on Dry Land', 1925), La Amante ('The Mistress', 1926) and El alba del alhelí ('The Dawn of the Wallflower', 1927). This early work fell broadly into the Cancionero tradition, though from a markedly avant-garde perspective. After falling in with the other members of the Generation of '27, Alberti began to show the profound influence of Luis de Góngora on his work, most obviously in Cal y canto ('Quicklime and Plainsong', 1929). It was, however, the introspective surrealism of Sobre los ángeles ('Concerning the Angels', 1929), whose tone was perhaps anticipated by some of the more sombre moments of Cal y canto, that established Alberti as a mature poet. Sobre los ángeles is widely considered to be Alberti's best work.

Hijo de una familia de ingenieros de caminos, en su ciudad natal estudió bachillerato y Magisterio en la Escuela Normal de Toledo, donde obtuvo un título de maestro nacional que nunca llegó a ejercer. Desde muy joven colaboró como crítico literario en periódicos y revistas tan importantes como Los Lunes de El Imparcial, España, La Pluma (dirigida entonces por el que sería su cuñado, Cipriano Rivas Cherif, y Manuel Azaña), Revista de Occidente (fundada por Ortega y Gasset) y El Sol. Fue crítico literario de este último diario, para el que usó el seudónimo de Gerardo Rivera. Durante la República fue asiduo de la tertulia del Hotel Regina. Conoció a Azaña en 1921 en la redacción de La Pluma, y cuando éste funda el Grupo de Acción Republicana en 1925, cuenta con el poeta Domenchina, al igual que hará en 1934, cuando se funda Izquierda Republicana; elegido presidente, fue secretario particular suyo. Pero dimitió en 1935 por razones de salud, ya que padecía fuertes dolores reumáticos que en ocasiones llegaban a dejarle paralizado. En junio de 1936 fue nombrado delegado del gobierno del Instituto del Libro Español. En noviembre de 1936 se casó con la también poeta Ernestina de Champourcín, a la que había conocido en 1930. Al ser nombrado jefe del Servicio Español de Información creó el Boletín de Información y el Suplemento Literario del Servicio Español de Información, en el que colaboró Antonio Machado. En enero de 1938 fue nombrado secretario del Gabinete Diplomático de Azaña hasta su dimisión. Cuando ya terminaba la Guerra Civil estuvo en Valencia con el gobierno republicano y Domenchina fue miembro del Consejo de Colaboración de la revista Hora de España; ya en Barcelona, colaboró en las páginas de La Vanguardia. Domenchina y su mujer se exiliaron en febrero de 1939, primero a Francia (estuvieron tres meses en Toulouse, luego en París y por fin en México, donde Azaña le consiguió un puesto en la Casa de España dirigida por Alfonso Reyes), y allí, acompañado por su mujer, su madre y su hermana, ambas viudas,y sus sobrinos Rodrigo y Encarnación, trabajó en labores editoriales, de traductor sobre todo; murió de enfisema pulmonar el 27 de octubre de 1959 y está enterrado en el cementerio español de la capital mexicana.

Fue uno de los más importantes poetas de la generación del 27. Cursó estudios universitarios en París, dónde se casó en primeras nupcias y posteriormente, en 1917, también dio clases en La Sorobona. También impartió cursos en Oxford. En 1924, con treinta años de edad, regresó a España, dónde inició su carrera literaria. Siendo uno de los discípulos más directos de Juan Ramón Jímenez, elaboró una poética muy personal que se proponía eliminar lo anecdótico, sustantivizar los adjetivos, preferenciar los versos cortos, reducir el número de verbos, concentrar los temas poéticos y primar la precisión del lenguaje por encima del lirismo. A ese procedimiento se conoce como poesía pura Tras publicar varios poemas sueltos en revistas literarias, lanzó su primer poemario, Cántico en el años 1928. En años sucesivos continuó escribiendo poemas que ampliaron su volumen, pasando de los 75 poemas iniciales a los 335 de la versión de 1950. Entre su producción también destaca Aire nuestro y Homenaje: Reunión de vidas. En 1938, a causa de la Guerra Cívil española, se exilió en Estados Unidos, dónde impartió clases en prestigiosas universidades americanas como por ejemplo Hardvard. En 1947, tras enviudar, se marchó a Italia. Ahí conoció a quien sería luego su segunda esposa. Años después se trasladaría a vivir a Málaga. En 1983 fue nombrado hijo predilecto de Andalucía. En el año 1976 recibió el Premio Cervantes y en el 1977 el Premio Internacional Alfonso Reyes.

Pedro Salinas y Serrano (27 November 1891 – 4 December 1951) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27, as well as a university teacher, scholar and literary critic. In 1937, he delivered the Turnbull lectures at Johns Hopkins University. These were later published under the title Reality and the Poet in Spanish Poetry. e was born in Madrid in the Calle de Toledo, 1891, in a house very close to the San Isidro church/cathedral. Salinas lived his early years in the heart of the city and went to school first in the Colegio Hispano-Francés and then in the Instituto Nacional de Segunda Enseñanza, both close by the church. His father, a cloth-merchant, died in 1899. He began to study Law at the Universidad central in 1908 and in 1910 started to study History concurrently. He graduated successfully in both courses in 1913. During his undergraduate years, he began to write and publish poems in small circulation journals such as Prometeo.[2] In 1914 he became the Spanish lector at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris until 1917, when he received his Doctorate. He had married Margarita Bonmarti, a Spanish girl of Algerian descent whom he had met on his summer holidays in Santa Pola, Alicante, in December 1915. She had been born in 1884. They had two children, Soledad (always referred to as Solita) born in 1920 and Jaime born in 1925. His academic life seemed to act as a model for his slightly younger contemporary Jorge Guillén with whom he struck up a friendship in 1920. In 1918 he was appointed Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Seville and he held the post until 1928, although he spent 1922-23 as lector at the University of Cambridge.[3] One of his students in Seville was Luis Cernuda in the academic year 1919-20, to whom he gave special encouragement. He urged him to read modern French literature, in particular André Gide and the poetry of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud.[4] He continued to publish poems in magazines such as España and La Pluma. In vacations, he spent time as a lecturer at the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he got to know the leading lights of his generation, such as García Lorca and Rafael Alberti. In April 1926, he was present at the gathering in Madrid where the first plans to celebrate the tercentenary of Góngora's death were laid. Salinas was to edit the volume devoted to the sonnets: a project that never came to fruition. While at Cambridge, his translation of the first two volumes and part of the third of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time into Spanish was published. And in 1925, his modernised version of El Poema de Mío Cid was published by Revista de Occidente. In 1928 he became a researcher at the Centro de Estudios Históricos in Madrid before becoming director of studies for foreigners at the University of Madrid.[6] In 1930, he became a professor of Spanish literature at Madrid and doubled up as originator, organiser and secretary-general of the International Summer School of Santander between 1933 and 1936. This school was set up to accommodate 200 Spanish students (approximately 4 from each of the established universities in Spain) and an international teaching staff. On 8 March 1933, he was present at the premiere in Madrid of García Lorca's play Bodas de sangre. In August 1933, he was able to host performances at the Magdalena Palace in Santander by the travelling theatre company La Barraca that Lorca led. On 20 April 1936, he attended the launch party in Madrid for Luis Cernuda's new collection La realidad y el deseo.[9] and on 12 July he was present at a party in Madrid that took place just before García Lorca departed to Granada for the last time before his murder. It was there that Lorca read his new play La casa de Bernarda Alba for the last time. On 31 August 1936, shortly after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he moved to the USA, to take up the position of the Mary Whiton Calkins professor at Wellesley Coll

Gerardo Diego was a Spanish poet and member of the Generation of '27. He taught language and literature at institutes of learning in Soria, Gijón, Santander, and Madrid. He was also a literature and music critic for several newspapers. In 1925 he was awarded the National Prize for Literature and in 1947 he was given membership in the Spanish Royal Academy. His lifetime work was recognised with the Cervantes Prize awarded to him in 1979. He died in Madrid in 1987, age 90.