Selected Poems, Jorge Luis Borges
Selected Poems, Jorge Luis Borges
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Selected Poems
Volume 2

Author: Jorge Luis Borges, Alexander Coleman

Narrator: Juanita Devis

Unabridged: 14 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 06/20/2023


Synopsis

The largest collection of poetry ever assembled in English by “the most important Spanish-language writer since Cervantes” (Mario Vargas Llosa)

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, it draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986. Throughout this unique collection the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched by luminous English versions by a remarkable cast of translators, including Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, and John Updike.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About The Author

Jorges Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and educated in Europe. One of the most widely acclaimed writers of our time, he published many collections of poems, essays and short stories, before his death in Geneva in June 1986. In 1961 Borges shared the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in 1966 for his "outstanding contribution to literature." In 1971 Columbia University awarded him the first of many degrees of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa that he was to receive from the English-speaking world. In 1971 he received the fifth biennial Jerusalem Prize and in 1973 was given the Alfonso Reyes Prize, one of Mexico's most prestigious cultural awards. In 1980 he shared the Cervantes Prize (the Spanish world's highest literary accolade) with Gerardo Diego. Borges was Director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 until 1973. In a tribute to Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote: "His is a world of clear, pure, and at the same time unusual ideas...expressed in words of great directness and restraint. [He] was a superb storyteller. One reads most of Borges' tales with the hypnotic interest usually reserved for reading detective fiction..."


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ulysse on September 29, 2024

Among all the world’s crazy Poetry books There is none like this one By Gwendolyn Brooks Till now I thought Wallace Stevens the best Of rococo poets for his Harmonious zest Or Marianne Moore And her cockatoo muse Who sang baseball statistics To boys who shined shoes But Brooks is the rococoest And coolest......more

Goodreads review by chantel on May 03, 2022

Gwendolyn Brooks is a master wordsmith. Writing real life, much like Nina Simone, she was giving it up straight, with a tiny bit of chaser. I love her work and I have had this book for six years, never managing to get all the way through until a few days ago. I didn't always understand it when I was......more

Goodreads review by Jonfaith on April 10, 2020

Their retching rampage among their luminous Black pudding, among the guttural chained slime The weary blues of the Middle Passage led to a poet saying, Nah. This is a revolution: a way of saying Enough, all the while parsing out the subsequent syllables of civilization. Madame Brooks just beat down Ro......more

Goodreads review by Kim on April 22, 2023

The poet ruminated on various subjects, circling from oblique angles, but always worded in plain language. Her mind was a repository of simple, yet remarkable ideas and insights.  Brooks told us that if we wanted a poem, all we needed to do was to look out the window. Life is poetry, and by that, she......more


Quotes

“A surfeit of riches . . . Borges’s poetry alone would be enough to underwrite his immense reputation.” —Geoff Dyer, San Francisco Chronicle
 
“An unprecedented and invaluable collection.” Booklist
 
“A definitive collection . . . True beauty is a rare find. These poems expand the reader’s awareness of language, image, and what it means to live.” The Santa Fe New Mexican

“For today’s readers, Borges seems to be saying that more mysterious and magical than dreams or other worlds are the voices and words of our loved ones; beauty is a daily revelation, and happiness, the intelligence of understanding and recognition. Borges has become our classic voice of wonder.” —Julio Ortega, Brown University
 
“With Pablo Neruda and Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges set in motion the wave of astonishing writing that has given Latin American literature its high place in our time. Yet Borges stands alone, a planet unto himself, resisting categorization. Although literary fashions come and go, he is always there, endlessly re-readable by those who admire him, awaiting rediscovery by new generations of readers.” —Jay Parini, The Nation