The Poetics of Heterodox Desires in Federico García Lorca’s Late Poetry

This article examines the interweaving of heterodox desire and death in Federico García Lorca’s late poetic works through close readings of a selection of poems from Diván del Tamarit and Sonetos del amor oscuro (1931-1936). Both these works reveal Lorca’s mature lyrical approach to love experiences, existential anguish and the role of poetic creation through forms until then unprecedented in his poetics. Lorca’s negotiation with traditional and modernist poetic modes and his unique position between the normal and the dissident are used as a means to construct and problematise poetic subjectivity and its heterodoxies, while attempting to break spatiotemporal continuity through a poetic logic. Drawing on Lorca’s poetic theory of duende and on queer theorists Muñoz and Preciado, I argue that spatiotemporal transgressions and fluidity between desire and death are key elements of heterodox subjective formation which challenge normative ideas of gender, affect, sexuality and identity.