The Poems of Octavio Paz - Hardcover

Paz, Octavio

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811220435 ISBN 13: 9780811220439

Publisher: New Directions, 2012

Synopsis

Here at last is the first retrospective collection of Paz’s poetry to span his entire writing career, from the first published poem, at age seventeen, to his magnificent last poem; the whole is assiduously edited and translated by acclaimed essayist Eliot Weinberger ― who has been translating Paz for over forty years.

In 1990, the Swedish Academy awarded Octavio Paz the Nobel Prize in Literature “for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.” Paz is “a writer for the entire world to celebrate” (Chicago Tribune), “the poet-archer who goes straight to the heart and mind, where the center of being is one” (Nadine Gordimer),“the living conscience of his age” (Mario Vargas Llosa), “a poet-prophet, a genius” (Harold Bloom). Here at last is the first retrospective collection of Paz’s poetry to span his entire writing career, from the first published poem, at age seventeen, to his magnificent last poem; the whole is assiduously edited and translated by acclaimed essayist Eliot Weinberger ― who has been translating Paz for over forty years ― with additional translations by several poet-luminaries. This edition includes many poems that have never been translated into English before, new translations based on Paz’s final revisions, and a brilliant capsule biography of Paz by Weinberger, as well as notes on the poems in Paz’s own words, taken from various interviews he gave throughout his life.

About this title

About the Authors

Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City. He wrote many volumes of poetry, as well as a prolific body of remarkable works of nonfiction on subjects as varied as poetics, literary and art criticism, politics, culture, and Mexican history. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1977, the Cervantes Prize in 1981, and the Neustadt Prize in 1982. He received the German Peace Prize for his political work, and finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

Eliot Weinberger’s books of literary essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing, The Ghosts of Birds, and Angels & Saints. His political writings are collected in What I Heard About Iraq and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is a translator of the poetry of Bei Dao and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. He was formerly the general editor of the series Calligrams: Writings from and on China and the literary editor of the Murty Classical Library of India. Among his many translations of Latin American poetry and prose are The Poems of Octavio Paz, Paz’s In Light of India, Vicente Huidobro’s Altazor, Xavier Villaurrutia’s Nostalgiafor Death, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Seven Nights and Selected Non-Fictions. He has been publishing with New Directions since 1975.

Reviews

As Weinberger, long a translator of Mexican Nobel laureate Paz, acknowledges in a prefatory note to this comprehensive, dual-language retrospective, any act of translation remains forever incomplete. This is nowhere clearer, perhaps, than in this generous volume that uniquely covers Paz’s full evolution as an artist, from early, timid attempts to the prose-like passages of his postwar years to his accomplished, playful later pieces. Weinberger, along with a few poet-translators, such as Elizabeth Bishop, Denise Levertov, and Muriel Rukeyser, wrestles with the reflexive forms of alliterative Spanish, the informal second-person pronoun, which has no real analog in English, and the tricky accentual stresses and shades of emphasis found in Spanish. Weinberger includes poems never before translated into English, a fresh and concise biography of Paz, and a wealth of poems written all over the world, from Delhi to Paris to Tokyo and beyond, a representative selection which attests to Paz’s genuine cosmopolitanism. An incomparable entrée into a versatile and globally influential poet’s work. --Diego Báez

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811220435
• ISBN 13: 9780811220439
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592