Selected Poems

This review is about a single question. Why if Borges considered himself a poet above all, and if this book contains as it does contain most of his major themes are his real readers and his real fame the readers of his stories essays and short prose-pieces ? Why is the most loved Borges not found in the poems when the poems too do at times like the stories tell stories? Perhaps it is because the language of poetry is more dense and ambiguous and breaks the flow of the story. Perhaps it is because on the nonetheless more extended palette of the story a more extensive picture can be painted. Perhaps it is because too the element of mystery so great in Borges work comes to us in a stronger way in a narrative telling? Or perhaps too Borges whether he likes it or not is in his lists and his recollections really more a figure of prose than of poetry. And perhaps and this the real paradox Borges poetry is too more prose- like than poetic in many ways. Perhaps his way of going on in such intellectual questioning fashion renders his poetry more mind- like and less in deep lyric feeling than the deepest poetry means? I ask this as prelude to saying a few words about these poems most of which I have read, and few of which I remember.And this too is part of it. The Borges name is connected with those tales from The Aleph to Funes to Borges and I . It is less connected with any of the poems And all of this review seems now to me somehow unfair. Borges is a great writer and his words mean more than anything written about them. Reading these poems will give so much pleasure , so much material for reflection, so many characters, stories, moods, ideas, dreams, passages of life, labyrinths, ships, coffee cups, imitations, duels in the sun and duels in the darkness, light as a metaphor and light as light, darkness as darkness and darkness as sight, worlds within and more worlds within and more worlds within and without and words as literature true literature literature of the tradition that the maker Borges makes and remakes and makes and remakes a poem.

It is strange reviewing it. It's like reviewing some sacred book... The whole World is here. And more... Here is Argentina with its familiar (to Borges) streets; here is a poem about chess, the Moon, tigers. Men. Here is Iceland in all its beauty and past; in a way no one else can ever portray it. Beautiful poems about art, God, history, mirrors, death, life, war, Shinto, Love, time, eternity, blindness, mortality, emotion, thoughts... everything and nothing... Through this precious book we may perceive all of this through Borges' blind, ever watching, tired eyes. I love to be lost in all those words...

i got this wonderful book as a very unexpected christmas gift. i don't speak spanish, so can't address the claims that the translations are inadequate.what is here in english, taken on those terms alone, is till great. recurring themes of tigers, mirrors, his beloved hometown, the history of literature, the bible, memory, distortions in time & space, heaven and hell weave themselves through over six decades of dazzling images and heartbreaking tenderness.it's also playful- filled with bits from imagined histories and books which i almost find myself wanting to locate, as these little bits are too beautiful to be unreal.

The Selected Poems of Jorges Luis Borges presents both a significant contribution to the world of poetry, and strong achievement in and of itself. With translations by major poets of our time, from W.S. Merwin to John Updike to Mark Strand, the reader will witness, possibly for the first time, the poems of Borges, rendered in English, as he had intended them in his own native tongue. Despite the apparent ease of the Latin tongue to the English ear, Borges' poems, like those of Neruda and Lorca, are difficult to render in the English language. English, spoken in a twentieth century style, is unlike Spanish (or Italian) in that it can not easily maintain a rhythm consistent with smooth rhyme and still avoid the appearance of decadence or sentimentality. To complicate matters further, Borges poems are of a complex nature that use subtle ironies and twists within his own language (not to mention the frequent colloquialisms that appear in his earlier work). Borges, a precurser of the "Magical Realists" (such as Fernado Pessoa and Eugenio Montale, and as well, possibibly, Umberto Eco) weaves often unlikely images and situations together into a richly complex tapestry that arouses questions of identity and the self, of reality and the possibilty for dreams. All the translators of this collection skillfully rework and adapt Borges deeply personal mythic style poems in an English that is at once accessible, and overwhelming. A superb project!

I bought this book as a birthday present to myself, and it was one of the best presents I've ever received or given! Borges's poetry is as great as his short stories. Some of the English translations are a bit shaky, but since the original Spanish versions are in this collection, too, those of you who read Spanish can translate it for yourselves. Read the poem "James Joyce" and then read some James Joyce, too.