Synopsis
A major bilingual anthology of twentieth-century Latin American poetry
During a century of extraordinary change, poets became the chroniclers of deep polarizations. From Rubén Darío’s quest to renew the Spanish language to César Vallejo’s linking of religion and politics, from Jorge Luis Borges’s cosmopolitanism to Pablo Neruda’s placement of poetry as uncompromising speaker for the downtrodden, and from Alejandra Pizarnik’s agonies of the self to Humberto Ak’Abal's examination of all things indigenous, it is through verse that the hemisphere’s cantankerous collective soul in an age of overhaul might best be understood.
A brilliant, moving, and thought-provoking summation of these forking paths, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry invites us to look at an illustrious literary tradition with fresh eyes. Ilan Stavans, one of the foremost scholars of Hispanic culture and a distinguished translator, goes beyond easy geographical and linguistic categorizations in gathering these works. This bilingual anthology features eighty-four authors from sixteen different countries writing in Spanish, Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, and Spanglish. The poems are rendered into English in inspired fashion by first-rate translators such as Elizabeth Bishop, Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, and Richard Wilbur.
In these pages the reader will experience the power of poetry to account for a hundred years in the life of a restless continent.
About Ilan Stavans
See more books from this AuthorThis ambitious anthology from critic and translator Stavans (Dictionary Days) attempts to introduce North American readers to the great strengths and the variety of Latin American modernity in verse.
Mar 21 2011 | Read Full Review of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Cen...The tremendous diversity of modern Latin American poetry is on display in a new anthology edited by Ilan Stavans that also features top-notch translations.
May 22 2011 | Read Full Review of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Cen...By jonSun, 04/17/2011 - 16:43.
Apr 17 2011 | Read Full Review of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Cen...