Es verdad!/It’s True is a unique artist book, which includes four poems by Federico García Lorca, and nine original drawings by Manuel Neri. The poems ¡Es verdad!, Canción del naranjo seco, and Canción del día que se va are from the book Canciones (1921-24), which was first published in 1927 by Litoral, Malaga, and in a second edition by Revista de Occidente, Madrid in 1929. The English translations of ¡Es verdad!, entitled It’s True; Canción del naranjo seco, entitled Song of the Dead Orange Tree; and Canción del día que se va, entitled Song of Departing Day, are by Alan S. Trueblood. The poem El poeta dice la verdad was from a collection of Sonnets (sometimes referred to as Sonetos del amor oscuro) written in the 1930s and left unpublished at the time of Lorca’s death. Eleven of these poems were first published on March 17, 1984, in a special supplement to the Madrid newspaper A.B.C. The English translation, entitled The Poet Tells the Truth, is by Angela Jaffray. These translations were published in the book Federico García Lorca: Collected Poems (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux).
The drawings by Manuel Neri, in graphite and water-based pigments, are from the series Mary Julia Study done in 2005, and were selected by Manuel Neri to accompany the poems for this book. The Introduction was written in English by Mary Julia Klimenko and translated into Spanish by Jaime Moreno Villarreal. The calligraphy of the text and page designs were created and executed by Thomas Ingmire on Rives BFK White paper in the Summer of 2008. The calligraphy for the Introduction, biographies, and colophon was done by Akiho Sugiyama.
The binding structure and leather binding for the book were designed by Daniel E. Kelm and produced by Daniel E. Kelm, Kylin Lee and other mechanics at the Wide Awake Garage in Easthampton, Massachusetts. The book is bound in goatskin leather, with a cover design that combines hand-tooling and die-stamping in gold leaf. The book is housed in a handmade paper-covered box produced by Foolscap Press in Santa Cruz, California. The uniquely painted designs, calligraphy, and collage elements on the cover of the box are by Thomas Ingmire.
