Configurations: Poetry

by Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz, the 1990 Nobel Laureate, has won distinction as an anthropologist, philosopher and critic of art and literature. But it is as a poet that he is most celebrated. Configurations was his first major collection to be published in this country, and includes in their entirety Sun Stone (1957) and Blanco (1967). Paz himself translated many of the poems from the Spanish. Some distinguished contributors to this bilingual edition include, among others, Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp. Denise Levertov, and Muriel Rukeyser. Paz's poems, although rooted in the mythology of South America and his native Mexico, nevertheless have an international background, transfiguring the images of the contemporary world. Powerful, angry, erotic, they voice the desires and rage of a generation.

Genres: Poetry, Spanish Literature

212 pages, Paperback

Published January 17, 1971

About the author

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature ("for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.")

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are generally quite difficult and there was much here I didn't really get. But when I did feel like I was getting it, I thought it was terrific, and even when I didn't, I enjoyed many arresting images and paradoxes.

Here's the short poem "Dawn" ("Madrugada"), translated by Charles Tomlinson:

Cold rapid hands
Draw back one by one
The bandages of dark
I open my eyes
Still
I am living
At the centre
Of a wound still fresh

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Octavio Paz has this transcendent gift for poems which words transform into images as you read them. His use of red, blue, white, black, yellow are especially notable as they constantly enforce the spirit of Mexico that he invokes .

"Sunstone" & "Blanco" are highly recommended (but really they all are)!

"I want to go on, to go beyond; I cannot;
the moment scatters itself in many things,
I have slept the dreams of the stone that never dreams
and deep among the dreams of years like stones
have heard the singing of my imprisoned blood,
with a premonition of light the sea sang,
and one by one the barriers give way,
all of the gates have fallen to decay,
the sun has forced an entrance through my forehead,
has opened my eyelids at last that were kept closed,
unfastened my being of its swaddling clothes,
has rooted me out of my self, and separated
me from my animal sleep centuries of stone
and the magic of reflections resurrects
willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever"

[hence · Rating 5 out of 5]

aspirations 🥵

the translations are not always perfect though, especially Levertov's... too much liberty taken with the line work

[Viki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Octavio Paz's poems are subtle, earthy, and erotic. There is also a duality in his pieces; things can be and not be in the same instant, and he elegantly crafts his words to give that juxtaposition of varying realities resonance. His verses remind me of the parables found in the Bible-stories that teach on many levels. The deeper you go, the more complicated the philosophy, and the closer you get to simpler truth.
The intertwined themes of sex, eroticism, and love demonstrate the fecundity of the earth and the individual. While the true understanding of man's essence proves elusive, certain rules apply. Love is certain and uncertain; the laws of both man and nature can be cruel and tender.
Stones, the sun, nightingales, the wind-the palpable, the visible, the audible create concrete from abstract. Personified mist, shadow, and light create weight where none existed. "Over the table falls interminably the lamps spread hair." Light allows us to see, but what does it illuminate? A night which turns the window to immensity.
The permanent and ephemeral exist together in Ocatvio Paz's poetry; it is an illumination of the immense power of words and those things which can only be harnessed for a period of time.

[MAC Vogt · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's clear that Paz is a genius, and so I cannot rate this below five regardless of my inability to grasp much of it. But that is somewhat the point with surrealism, yes? These poems slip over me, rewarding re-reading with further ambiguities and suspicious clarities as maybe all clarities should be or are or not. Challenging.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Paz finds these impossiblly small moments in time and space and unwinds them to reveal a transcendent beauty that is almost overpowering. Paz charts places in the psyche both mystical and profound with an almost disturbing ease. Best read in a quiet, contemplative isolation.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dense poetry with broad cultural references. It seems like a book that could be studied at a graduate level. I certainly realized that this was great poetry but that perhaps I was not worthy of fully appreciating it.

[Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is on my nightshelf

[Russ]

Another poet that uses form and language to push the envelope.
Highly recommended

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silence's architecture . . .

[laila* · Rating 4 out of 5]

give it up for: melusine+heavy blood

[Sean]

Dog-eared:
"Here"
"Touch"
"Example"

[zenrol mailliaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very kick-ass!

[sweet orange books · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first poem Piedra del Sol is magnificent, then we have short poems that are quite boring. The middle of the book is all about orientalism after a trip to India, and the poems are not good. After his letter to Leon, the quality rises again, as he comes back to the sun, elements, transparency and the original. His last poem, Blanco, is great. Throughout the whole collection, the themes that are coming back are sun, transparency, women, ideé fixe, duality, eyes, bodies, sex, death.

Read and reviewed: 2020-10-31