Juan Ramón Jiménez
(December 24, 1881 – May 29, 1958)
Zenobia Camprubí Aymar
(August 31, 1887–October 25, 1956)

4310 Queensbury Rd., Riverdale, MD.

Jiménez was a Spanish poet, editor, and critic. Among his better known works are Sonetos espirituales 1914–1916 (“Spiritual Sonnets, 1914–16,” 1916), Piedra y cielo (“Stones and Sky,” 1919), Poesía, en verso, 1917–1923 (1923), Poesía en prosa y verso (“Poetry in Prose and Verse,” 1932), Voces de mi copla (“Voices of My Song,” 1945), and Animal de fondo (“Animal at Bottom,” 1947).

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Jiménez went into exile in Cuba, the US, and Puerto Rico. He was a Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Maryland from 1943 to 1951. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956.

Camprubí, wife of Jiménez, is the author of poems and four memoirs, Juan Ramón y yo (1954), and three volumes of her Diarios (1937 - 1956), and was a translator, notably of the work of Rabinranath Tagore. She, too, taught at the University of Maryland, before settling in Puerto Rico with her husband.

Jiménez is remembered locally with an academic hall on the University of Maryland named in his honor. A plaque at the entrance features a translation of one of Jiménez's poems.