Pieces of Shadow: Selected Poems

by Jaime Sabines, W.S. Merwin (Translator)

There is an abundance of simple delight in Sabines' first Spanish-English collection. Like the blooms on a rose bush, his poems? often only a few lines long?contain little variety but are exquisite. Sabines has been publishing poetry in his native Mexico for almost 50 years and has influenced major American poets such as Mark Strand and Merwin, his translator. Sampling poetry from 10 of Sabines' volumes, Merwin's straightforward translations capture much of the quiet presence of the Spanish. Composed by Sabines in his 20s, poems in the first three sections tend to suffer from abstraction and focus on the most perennial of themes: hope, death, love, the "heart of man." Still, these lines reveal a poet for whom emotion is crucial, and who wants to tell his stories without pretense. With "Tarumba," Sabines breaks into a more forthright mode, perhaps having followed his own creative advice: "You have to act everything./ You have to break your head every day/ on a stone, for the water to flow." Though the imagery grows more sophisticated in later poems, Sabines' vigorous clearheadedness gives his more mature poems the economy of his earliest work. Finally, poems about watching television and buying a luxury car show Sabines in his stride, examining the things of this world with open eyes. This is a vital addition to the body of 20th-century Mexican poetry in English.

Genres: Poetry

216 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1996

About the author

Poeta y político mexicano, considerado como uno de los grandes poetas mexicanos del siglo XX

Sus primeros pasos por la poesía fueron "Instrospección", "A mi madre", "Siento que te pierdo" y "Primaveral", los anteriores fueron publicados en el periódico El Estudiante, una publicación de las sociedades estudiantiles de la Escuela Normal y de la Preparatoria de Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

En 1949 regresa a la Ciudad de México para ingresar a la licenciatura en «Lengua y literatura española» en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Fue alumno de Julio Torri, Agustín Yáñez, José Gaos y Eduardo Nicol. Entre sus compañeros de clase, destacan los nombres de Emilio Carballido, Sergio Magaña, Sergio Galindo, Rosario Castellanos y Ramón Xirau. La generación de Jaime Sabines -poetas, novelistas, dramaturgos, se reunía en un taller literario con Efrén Hernández.

Entre sus influencias literarias se cuentan Pablo Neruda, García Lorca y James Joyce.
En 1949 nace Horal, poemario que inicialmente constaría de 62 poemas, pero que el autor recortó unos días antes de viajar a Tuxtla.

Falleció el 19 de marzo de 1999 en la Ciudad de México, tras varios años de enfermedades, a la edad de 72 años.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

At midnight, at the last moment of August, I think sadly about the leaves that keep falling from the calendars. I feel that I am the tree of the calendars.

Every day, my child, that goes away forever, leaves me asking: if someone who loses a parent is an orphan, i someone who has lost a wife is a widower, what is the word for someone who loses a child? What is the word for someone who loses time? And if I myself am time, what is the word for me if I lose myself?

Day and night, not Monday or Tuesday, nor August or September, day and night are the only measure of our duration. To exist is to last, to open your eyes and close them.

Every night at this time, forever, I am the one who has lost the day. (Even though I may feel, in the heart of this time, the dawn climbing, like the fruit in the branches of the peach tree).

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare and wonderful book! The design and feel of the book alone makes it one of my prized books. Jaime Sabines, as always, is at his best.

[Kevin S · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Elena Cool · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5