Borges: Selected Poems - Softcover

Borges, Jorge Luis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140587217 ISBN 13: 9780140587210

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2000

Synopsis

The largest collection of poetry ever assembled in English by “the most important Spanish-language writer since Cervantes” (Mario Vargas Llosa)

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, it draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986. Throughout this unique collection the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched by luminous English versions by a remarkable cast of translators, including Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, and John Updike.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

About the Author

Jorges Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and educated in Europe. One of the most widely acclaimed writers of our time, he published many collections of poems, essays and short stories, before his death in Geneva in June 1986. In 1961 Borges shared the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in 1966 for his "outstanding contribution to literature." In 1971 Columbia University awarded him the first of many degrees of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa that he was to receive from the English-speaking world. In 1971 he received the fifth biennial Jerusalem Prize and in 1973 was given the Alfonso Reyes Prize, one of Mexico's most prestigious cultural awards. In 1980 he shared the Cervantes Prize (the Spanish world's highest literary accolade) with Gerardo Diego. Borges was Director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 until 1973. In a tribute to Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote: "His is a world of clear, pure, and at the same time unusual ideas...expressed in words of great directness and restraint. [He] was a superb storyteller. One reads most of Borges' tales with the hypnotic interest usually reserved for reading detective fiction..."

From the Back Cover

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. A decade before writing his earliest stories, Borges published his first book of poems. And even in that precocious debut, the twenty-four-year-old poet claimed for himself the principal themes that would preoccupy him for the next half century: the cult of his ancestors and his "mysterious habit called Buenos Aires"; the enigma of time and the many yesterdays of history; the metaphysics of Schopenhauer and Berkeley; the now-familiar mirrors, mazes, and swords.

This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems -- the largest collection of Borges' poetry ever assembled in English, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, the selection draws from a lifetime's work -- from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986. Throughout this unique collection the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched by luminous English versions rendered by a remarkable cast of translators: Willis Barnstone, Alexander Coleman, Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, Kenneth Krabbenhoft, Eric McHenry, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Hoyt Rogers, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, Alan S. Trueblood, and John Updike.

When Penguin published Andrew Hurley's new translation of Borges' Collected Fictions last year, the book was hailed in The New York Times as "an event, a cause for celebration". Now, the celebration continues with Selected Poems, the second installment in Penguin's three-volume edition of Borges' collectedworks in English.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140587217
• ISBN 13: 9780140587210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496
• Editor: Coleman Alexander