What do you think?
Rate this book
The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: An Anthology
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.
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.
728 pages, Hardcover
First published March 29, 2011
About the author
Ilan Stavans
255 books133 followersIlan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. An award-winning writer and public television host, his books include Growing Up Latino and Spanglish. A native of Mexico City, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1735525095i/6431467._UX200_CR0,11,200,200_.jpg)
March 22, 2016
In honour of World Poetry Day (March 21st)
There is something eminently satisfying about holding a tome of a text in your hands. You know, the big brick of a book that makes you feel like Atlas carrying the weight of literature, the kind that leaves bruises on your chest when you read in bed. The best are those beast whose physical weight seems necessary to further emphasize the literary weight within (think Ulysses, think Gravity's Rainbow, definitely think Women and Men); the sort that smacks you right in your book-loving heart with the same sort of punch you'd experience had you taken a blow to the head from said book (oh, you better believe I bought the hardcover). FSG has done us all a great service with their satisfyingly bulky Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry anthology which captures a broad landscape of modern Latin-American poets and serves them up like those overwhelmingly bountiful appetizer sampler plates at a dirty, late-night diner.
The selection is incredible and contains many expected names—Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz (there is a fantastic Paz poem about Joseph Cornell I was previously unfamiliar with), Alfonso Reyes, Julio Cortazar, and the Prince himself, Roberto Bolaño— many of my beloved Latin-American poets like Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, Mario Benedetti and Juan Gelman, but most importantly a whole ocean of poets I was unfamiliar with. This book is a wonderful chance to sift for gold, and believe me, there is much to be found. This collection introduced me to Alejandra Pizarnik whom I've since ordered everything and anything I can find in translation until her Selected Poems appears this spring (calling her the Argentina's answer to Sylvia Plath—which I will surely do in an upcoming review I'm sure—isn't wrong but also seems too catchy to be accurate. In short, Pizarnik is dark but with a comforting and incredible light.) The selection in this volume is amazing and everyone is sure to walk away with a new-found obsession with a poet.
Additionally impressive are wide variety of translators found in this volume, many of which you are sure to recognize. There are W.S. Merwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Alastair Reid, Samuel Becket, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Laura Healey, and people I outright adore like Mark Strand and Eliot Weinberger. The translators were reason enough to purchase this. I also very much appreciate when a book of translated poems is printed bilingually. It seems like a move of honesty and not tricking the reader into feeling the translation is a definite ruling. More importantly, it opens up an avenue of insight into the art of translation by allowing the reader to make their own judgement on what they feel the translation would be and then compare them to the translator's work to learn and guess from the nuances why a specific word selection might have been preferable to an alternative.
If you are interested in poetry even in the slightest, this is a wonderful collection. I have a certain love for Latin-American literature and especially poetry, but this is a collection everyone will walk away from with a new poet to fall in love with.
4/5
To Be Read In the Interrogative
- Julio Cortazar.
Have you seen
Have you truly seen
the snow the stars the felt steps of the breeze
Have you touched
really have you touched
the plate the bread the face of that woman you love
so much
Have you lived
like a blow to the head
the flash the gasp the fall the flight
Have you known
known in every pore of your skin
how your eyes your hands your sex your soft heart
must be thrown away
must be wept away
must be invented all over again
There is something eminently satisfying about holding a tome of a text in your hands. You know, the big brick of a book that makes you feel like Atlas carrying the weight of literature, the kind that leaves bruises on your chest when you read in bed. The best are those beast whose physical weight seems necessary to further emphasize the literary weight within (think Ulysses, think Gravity's Rainbow, definitely think Women and Men); the sort that smacks you right in your book-loving heart with the same sort of punch you'd experience had you taken a blow to the head from said book (oh, you better believe I bought the hardcover). FSG has done us all a great service with their satisfyingly bulky Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry anthology which captures a broad landscape of modern Latin-American poets and serves them up like those overwhelmingly bountiful appetizer sampler plates at a dirty, late-night diner.
The selection is incredible and contains many expected names—Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz (there is a fantastic Paz poem about Joseph Cornell I was previously unfamiliar with), Alfonso Reyes, Julio Cortazar, and the Prince himself, Roberto Bolaño— many of my beloved Latin-American poets like Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, Mario Benedetti and Juan Gelman, but most importantly a whole ocean of poets I was unfamiliar with. This book is a wonderful chance to sift for gold, and believe me, there is much to be found. This collection introduced me to Alejandra Pizarnik whom I've since ordered everything and anything I can find in translation until her Selected Poems appears this spring (calling her the Argentina's answer to Sylvia Plath—which I will surely do in an upcoming review I'm sure—isn't wrong but also seems too catchy to be accurate. In short, Pizarnik is dark but with a comforting and incredible light.) The selection in this volume is amazing and everyone is sure to walk away with a new-found obsession with a poet.
Additionally impressive are wide variety of translators found in this volume, many of which you are sure to recognize. There are W.S. Merwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Alastair Reid, Samuel Becket, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Laura Healey, and people I outright adore like Mark Strand and Eliot Weinberger. The translators were reason enough to purchase this. I also very much appreciate when a book of translated poems is printed bilingually. It seems like a move of honesty and not tricking the reader into feeling the translation is a definite ruling. More importantly, it opens up an avenue of insight into the art of translation by allowing the reader to make their own judgement on what they feel the translation would be and then compare them to the translator's work to learn and guess from the nuances why a specific word selection might have been preferable to an alternative.
If you are interested in poetry even in the slightest, this is a wonderful collection. I have a certain love for Latin-American literature and especially poetry, but this is a collection everyone will walk away from with a new poet to fall in love with.
4/5
To Be Read In the Interrogative
- Julio Cortazar.
Have you seen
Have you truly seen
the snow the stars the felt steps of the breeze
Have you touched
really have you touched
the plate the bread the face of that woman you love
so much
Have you lived
like a blow to the head
the flash the gasp the fall the flight
Have you known
known in every pore of your skin
how your eyes your hands your sex your soft heart
must be thrown away
must be wept away
must be invented all over again
December 3, 2018
"Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma.
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma." - de Versos sencillos por José Martí
This book was recommended to me years ago and I'm sorry it took me so long to read it. It is a testament to good poetry, the amazing diversity of the poets of Latin America (which most English-speakers won't know beyond the Chilean and Argentine (and maybe the Cuban I quoted above), and to the power of translation. The book is edited by the scholar Ilan Stavans who does some of the translation work in this book and wrote an amazing introduction which does for Latin American poetry what James Weldon Johnson's introduction in The Book of American Negro Poetry did for Black American poetry. It is good to learn about how Latin American poetry evolved and developed between different languages and different historical circumstances.
"I have a word inside my mouth
and don't let it get out and don't get rid of it,
though its blood-gush pushes at me.
If I let it out it would scorch the bright grass,
drain blood from lambs, drop birds from air." - 1st stanza of A Word by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin.
A quick note on the translators: besides Stavans himself, there is a whole host of translators, known and unknown, in this book. We have usual suspects of Spanish to English translation like Gregory Rabassa & W. S. Merwin, but also folks like Samuel Beckett & Allen Ginsberg. It is very interesting to see how these folks go about translating Spanish, Portuguese, Judaeo-Spanish, and the indigenous languages of Latin America. Because this book is a dual-translated, you get to see the poem in the original language as well as in English. I'm glad that they did not just include Spanish and Portuguese.
"Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma... ¡Yo no sé!
Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.
Y el hombre... Pobre... ¡pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé!" - Los heraldos negros por César Vallejo (One of my favorite poems from this collection.)
So many good poets in this book, from Nicolás Guillén to Pueblo Neruda, Carlos Drummond de Andrade to Natalio Hernández Xocoyotzin, Dulce María Loynaz to Myriam Moscona. There's something so amazing about poetry. It can do things and work in ways that other literary genres can't. It can tell a story and express a sentiment in ways that prose can't. I grew-up in a culture of poets--of lyricists. I love the genre with all my heart. I like words with all my heart. I know the power of translation and its discontents.
" to León Ostrov
Lord
The cage has become a bird
and has flown away
and my heart is crazy
because it howls at death
and smiles behind the wind
at my ravings
What will I do with my fear
What will I do with my fear
Light no longer dances in my smile
nor do seasons burn doves in my ideas
and gone where death
teaches the dead to live
Lord
The air punishes my body
Behind the air there are monsters
that drink my blood
It is a disaster
It is the hour of emptiness not empty
It is the moment to bolt closed the lips
to hear the screaming of the condmned
to study each one of my names
hanged by its neck in nothingness
Lord
I am twenty years old
My eyes are also twenty
Yet say nothing
Lord
I have lived out my life in an instant
The last innocence shattered
Now is never or nevermore
or simply was
How is it I don't kill myself in front of a mirror
and disappear to reappear in the sea
where a great ship would await me
with its lights burning?
How is it I don't pull out my veins
and with them build a ladder
to flee to the other side of night?
The beginning has given birth to the end
Everything will remain the same
The worn-out smiles
The concerned concern
The questions of stone on stone
The grimaces that mimic love
Everything will remain the same
But my arms insist on embracing the world
because they still haven't been taught
that it's too late
Lord
Throw the coffins out of my blood
I remember my childhood
when I was an old woman
Flowers died in my hands
because the savage dance of joy
destroyed their heart
I remember the black mornings of sun
when I was a girl
which is to say yesterday
which is to say centuries ago
Lord
The cage has become a bird
and has devoured my hopes
Lord
The cage has become a bird
What will I do with my fear." - The Awakening by Alejandra Pizarnik
De donde crece la palma.
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma." - de Versos sencillos por José Martí
This book was recommended to me years ago and I'm sorry it took me so long to read it. It is a testament to good poetry, the amazing diversity of the poets of Latin America (which most English-speakers won't know beyond the Chilean and Argentine (and maybe the Cuban I quoted above), and to the power of translation. The book is edited by the scholar Ilan Stavans who does some of the translation work in this book and wrote an amazing introduction which does for Latin American poetry what James Weldon Johnson's introduction in The Book of American Negro Poetry did for Black American poetry. It is good to learn about how Latin American poetry evolved and developed between different languages and different historical circumstances.
"I have a word inside my mouth
and don't let it get out and don't get rid of it,
though its blood-gush pushes at me.
If I let it out it would scorch the bright grass,
drain blood from lambs, drop birds from air." - 1st stanza of A Word by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin.
A quick note on the translators: besides Stavans himself, there is a whole host of translators, known and unknown, in this book. We have usual suspects of Spanish to English translation like Gregory Rabassa & W. S. Merwin, but also folks like Samuel Beckett & Allen Ginsberg. It is very interesting to see how these folks go about translating Spanish, Portuguese, Judaeo-Spanish, and the indigenous languages of Latin America. Because this book is a dual-translated, you get to see the poem in the original language as well as in English. I'm glad that they did not just include Spanish and Portuguese.
"Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma... ¡Yo no sé!
Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.
Y el hombre... Pobre... ¡pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé!" - Los heraldos negros por César Vallejo (One of my favorite poems from this collection.)
So many good poets in this book, from Nicolás Guillén to Pueblo Neruda, Carlos Drummond de Andrade to Natalio Hernández Xocoyotzin, Dulce María Loynaz to Myriam Moscona. There's something so amazing about poetry. It can do things and work in ways that other literary genres can't. It can tell a story and express a sentiment in ways that prose can't. I grew-up in a culture of poets--of lyricists. I love the genre with all my heart. I like words with all my heart. I know the power of translation and its discontents.
" to León Ostrov
Lord
The cage has become a bird
and has flown away
and my heart is crazy
because it howls at death
and smiles behind the wind
at my ravings
What will I do with my fear
What will I do with my fear
Light no longer dances in my smile
nor do seasons burn doves in my ideas
and gone where death
teaches the dead to live
Lord
The air punishes my body
Behind the air there are monsters
that drink my blood
It is a disaster
It is the hour of emptiness not empty
It is the moment to bolt closed the lips
to hear the screaming of the condmned
to study each one of my names
hanged by its neck in nothingness
Lord
I am twenty years old
My eyes are also twenty
Yet say nothing
Lord
I have lived out my life in an instant
The last innocence shattered
Now is never or nevermore
or simply was
How is it I don't kill myself in front of a mirror
and disappear to reappear in the sea
where a great ship would await me
with its lights burning?
How is it I don't pull out my veins
and with them build a ladder
to flee to the other side of night?
The beginning has given birth to the end
Everything will remain the same
The worn-out smiles
The concerned concern
The questions of stone on stone
The grimaces that mimic love
Everything will remain the same
But my arms insist on embracing the world
because they still haven't been taught
that it's too late
Lord
Throw the coffins out of my blood
I remember my childhood
when I was an old woman
Flowers died in my hands
because the savage dance of joy
destroyed their heart
I remember the black mornings of sun
when I was a girl
which is to say yesterday
which is to say centuries ago
Lord
The cage has become a bird
and has devoured my hopes
Lord
The cage has become a bird
What will I do with my fear." - The Awakening by Alejandra Pizarnik
July 15, 2022
Tough to rate this one. Most of the poems didn't really grab me (I often struggle with poetry in translation, despite my love for novels in translation.) That being said, it's a comprehensive collection that I can't really fault and might work better for others!
May 25, 2020
If it wasn't a borrowed book and I wouldn't have to hurry with finishing it, I could savour most of the texts for months and months, if not for longer. It is a beautiful collection, an appetizer, of a poetry from Latin America. An amazing bilingual poetry, which is addressed to everyone - those who know nothing about this particular literary tradition but also to those, who are well acquinted and just want to refreshen their memory or even discover new names (knowing almost nothing about Brasilian poets, it was an interesting experience to discover new names).
October 18, 2017
Read Harder Challenge #23(a): Read a book of poetry in translation on a theme other than love.
This book could easily work as a textbook for an entire semester's worth of study. It is broad in voice, country of origin, gender and original language.
This book could easily work as a textbook for an entire semester's worth of study. It is broad in voice, country of origin, gender and original language.
Read
July 23, 2015As with most poetry collections, it's like getting Al Bundy drunk off of Manischewitz, when what you really need is a little dip here and there of stronger stuff. Some of these poems, if you happen to open up to the right ones, will remind you of your first case of vertigo, and the limitless possibilities of the dreaming world that you leave at home in a locked drawer as you go about your daily language functions.
If only the rest of these selections were as aptly and funnily translated as Ginsberg / Ferlinghetti's rendition of Nicanor Parra's Soliloquy of the Individual. It almost feels like a lounge act. I'm the Individual. Hey.
If only the rest of these selections were as aptly and funnily translated as Ginsberg / Ferlinghetti's rendition of Nicanor Parra's Soliloquy of the Individual. It almost feels like a lounge act. I'm the Individual. Hey.
January 16, 2024
A wonderful anthology, beautiful translations. It would have been improved by including poems from every Latin American country, but this collection focuses on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile. The poetry of Latin America is often nature poetry, evincing a deep love of homeland and astonishing cultural diversity amid the turmoil of post-colonialism in the 20th century.
"Come close and consider the words,
With a plain face hiding thousands of other faces
and with no interest in your response,
whether weak or strong,
each word asks:
Did you bring the key?"
"Come close and consider the words,
With a plain face hiding thousands of other faces
and with no interest in your response,
whether weak or strong,
each word asks:
Did you bring the key?"
January 21, 2015
This is a decent introduction to Latin American poetry. A few authors were left out and a few authors were given way too many pages but there are some real gems in this collection. And, it ends really strong. But, if you can read Spanish, you should read the originals as some of the translations aren't very faithful and/or the rhythm is lost and the poem is the weakened.
May 3, 2011
I'm generally not a fan of poetry collections. But this one was pretty awesome. Also, it gave me an excuse to brush up on my Spanish.
April 29, 2012
protip: if you're making a bilingual anthology, don't somehow leave out the translation for one of the poems.
February 17, 2013
i can't stop reading this!
February 18, 2013
I loved this book and even found some great new favorite poets!
July 16, 2017
Great compilation of Latin American poetry. A wide-ranging selection by poets I've been meaning to read more from and poets I just encountered in this book.
Read
April 3, 2012King Library (2nd floor) | PQ7087.E5 F78 2011
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews