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A selected poems translated by various translators has always seemed to me a questionable undertaking as it erases the overarching style and power of the poet. That is certainly the case here. Some translations are brilliant and capture the unique feel for the "labyrinthine" mind of Borges, while others are flat or prosaic or simply uninspired. This unevenness inevitably shadows the poet, and creates the impression of arbitrariness in Borges as a poet.
Borges has a fantastic writing style that is mysterious, witty, and earnest. His poems are thought-provoking and enjoyable to read, and I definitely recommend them to anyone who likes poetry :)
Great Condition, arrived in time, it was even flapped to the first poem - which was a nice touch.
Take a peek at both the Spanish and English versions to get a taste of his gorgeous melancholy and depth of thought, while he plays with the notion of water and time. This is an excellent bilingual book for the fervent admirers of "el maestro Borges" as well as those just beginning to read him. His poems are haunting and have traces of Francisco de Quevedo's "conceptismo," a literary school that emphasizes more on the concepts, or ideas, rather than form and complicated language, which is not to say that he is not a master of form. One of his finest sonnets, "La lluvia" can be found on page 114 of this book. Who could ever dispute the beauty of his poetry. In his old age, Borges went back to classical Spanish forms, especially the sonnet; the kind modified and developed by Garcilaso and Boscan, which they in part took from the Italian sonnet.
I cannot emphasize how much I love this book. An avid reader of the best poets of the Spanish and English canons of literature--and a very erudite literary critic--, Borges was an amazing poet. You will also find works from his youth in Fervor de Buenos Aires and all of his other major poems. He went back to those forms because he became blind. He needed to compose poems in his head and dictate them to his loyal wife or his friends. You must have it if you love poetry.
As he said: To see in every day and year a symbolof all the days of man and his years,and convert the outrage of the yearsinto a music, a sound, and a symbol.To see in death a dream, in the sunseta golden sadness--such is poetry,humble and immortal, poetry,returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Why is the most loved Borges not found in the poems when the poems too do at times like the stories tell stories. Perhaps his way of going on in such intellectual questioning fashion renders his poetry more mind- like and less in deep lyric feeling than the deepest poetry means. This review is about a single question. Perhaps it is because too the element of mystery so great in Borges work comes to us in a stronger way in a narrative telling. Borges is a great writer and his words mean more than anything written about them. Perhaps it is because the language of poetry is more dense and ambiguous and breaks the flow of the story. And perhaps and this the real paradox Borges poetry is too more prose- like than poetic in many ways.
The Borges name is connected with those tales from The Aleph to Funes to Borges and I. Why if Borges considered himself a poet above all, and if this book contains as it does contain most of his major themes are his real readers and his real fame the readers of his stories essays and short prose-pieces. I ask this as prelude to saying a few words about these poems most of which I have read, and few of which I remember.And this too is part of it. Perhaps it is because on the nonetheless more extended palette of the story a more extensive picture can be painted. Or perhaps too Borges whether he likes it or not is in his lists and his recollections really more a figure of prose than of poetry. It is less connected with any of the poems And all of this review seems now to me somehow unfair. Reading these poems will give so much pleasure , so much material for reflection, so many characters, stories, moods, ideas, dreams, passages of life, labyrinths, ships, coffee cups, imitations, duels in the sun and duels in the darkness, light as a metaphor and light as light, darkness as darkness and darkness as sight, worlds within and more worlds within and more worlds within and without and words as literature true literature literature of the tradition that the maker Borges makes and remakes and makes and remakes a poem.
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