Early Poems 1935-1955

by Octavio Paz, Muriel Rukeyser (Translator)

“The growth of the work of Octavio Paz,” writes Muriel Rukeyser in her preface to this bilingual selection of the Mexican poet’s Early Poems, “has made clear to an audience in many languages what was evident from the beginning … he is a great poet, a world-poet whom we need. The poems here speak––as does all his work since––deeply, erotically, with grave and passionate involvement.” In this, a much revised edition of the earlier Selected Poems (Indiana University Press, 1963), Miss Rukeyser has joined to her own translations those of Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp, Denise Levertov, and William Carlos Williams, while many of the readings embody Paz’s own revisions of the original texts. The poems were chosen from eight separate collections, among them Condición de nube (“Phase of Cloud”), Semillas para un himno (“Seeds for a Psalm”), Piedras sueltas (“Riprap”), and Estación violenta (“Violent Season”).

Genres: Poetry, Classics

145 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1973

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Light is laying waste the heavens
Droves of dominions in stampede
The eye retreats surrounded by mirrors

Landscapes enormous as insomnia
Stony ground of bone

Limitless autumn
Thirst lifts its invisible fountains
One last peppertree preaches in the desert

Close your eyes and hear the song of the light:
Noon takes shelter in your inner ear

Close your eyes and open them:
There is nobody not even yourself
Whatever is not stone is light

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

And if you close your eyes,
a river fills you from within,
flows forward, darkens you :
night brings its wetness to beaches in your soul.
*
I hear an incessant
river running between dimly discerned, looming
forms, drowsy and frowning.
It is the black and white cataract, the voices,
the laughter, the groans, of a confused
world hurling itself from a height.
And my thoughts that gallop and gallop and get
no further also fall and rise, and turn
back and plunge into the stagnant waters of
language.
A second ago it would have been easy to grasp a
word and repeat it once and then again,
any one of those phrases one utters alone in a
room without mirrors
to prove to oneself that it's not certain,
that we are still alive after all,
but now with weightless hands night is lulling the
furious tide, and one by one images recede,
one by one words cover their faces.

[lisa z · Rating 5 out of 5]

when becky still lived here and her and josh were reckless lovers and scott and i were equally reckless and enthralled with playing instruments into the dawn... she would pick up a book any book but this one more than the rest and start belting out the lyrics in a female woody guthrie sort of way, we would all join in usually with the broken sound of a melodica in the background. the four of us would dance in and out of blurry dysfunctional evenings all with a smoky laughter and salty tear cocktails for that whole year. later that summer i took this book with me to san fransisco i remember peering at scott from over the cover and us both thinking we would be together for eternity even though we knew better.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two bodies face to face
are at times two waves
and night is an ocean.

[hence · Rating 4 out of 5]

he uses kinda sexy voice sometimes which i think is sometimes romantic and then sometimes creepy idk

[Daniella · Rating 5 out of 5]

un libro para aguantar toda la vida. Poesía que a punto de leer no sé puede imaginar no haber leerlo. Lo voy a llevar en mi bolso a dónde voy. Son poemas que siempre quiero tener al lado para referirme, ir buscando entre las páginas amor, vida, los sueños, la belleza y la condición humana.

“Merece lo que sueñas”

[Evan Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can think Vincent for introducing me to Paz. Paz's early poems are so simple, so piercing, so lucid. The translations hardly seem to obscure the brilliance of the original.

I read this in the New Directions Paperbook edition, which is still in print, unlike the one that's on here.

[Wyatt Reu · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite poet. All brilliant.

Update as of 2023: not a fan of MR’s translations. They are extremely awkward at times and don’t capture the rhythm of the Spanish very well. EW’s translations in Poems of Octavio Paz somewhat of an improvement.

[Nyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of some of Paz's earlier work, and it includes the original Spanish, which I always like.

[Tyler Pursch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love love love it. Favorite poems is Water Night

[Elizabeth Sumoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

these poems got pretty whack not going to lie.

I think Paz really knows how to use language to conjure up strong images and thought provoking proverbs which was really fun to see in both the Spanish and English translation.

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful poetry published in a very easy fashion. Spanish is on one side and the English is on the other.