Selected Poems

by Jorge Luis Borges, Alexander Coleman (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140587210
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/2000
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	307,092
Product dimensions:	5.46(w) x 8.34(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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..."

Date of Birth:

August 24, 1899

Date of Death:

June 14, 1986

Place of Birth:

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Place of Death:

Geneva, Switzerland

Education:

B.A., Collège Calvin de Genève, 1914

Table of Contents

Jorge Luis Borges: 20 Selected PoemsFrom San Martin Copybook
Prologue
The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires
The Flow of Memories
Deathwatch on the Southside
Northern Suburb

From The Maker
For Leopoldo Lugones
The Maker
Dreamtigers
A Yellow Rose
Parable of Cervantes and Don Quixote
Paradiso, XXXI, 108
Parable of the Palace
Everything and Nothing
Ragnarök
Borges and I
Poem of the Gifts
The Hourglass
Chess
Mirrors
The Moon
Rain
The Other Tiger
The Borges
Ariosto and the Arabs
Embarking on the Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar
Luke XXIII
Adrogué
Ars Poetica
Museum
On Scientific Rigor
Quatrain
Boundaries
The Poet Proclaims His Renown
The Generous Friend
Le Regret D' Héraclite
Epilogue

From The Self and the Other
Prologue
The Cyclical Night
Of Heaven and Hell
Conjectural Poem
Poem of the Fourth Element
To a Minor Poet of the Greek Anthology
A Page to Commemorate Colonel Syárez, Victor at Junín
Matthew XXV: 30
The Dagger
Compass
A Poet of the Thirteenth Century
A Soldier of Urbina
Limits
Baltasar Gracián
A Saxon (A.D. 449)
The Golem
A Rose and Milton
Readers
John I: 14
Waking Up
To One No Longer Young
Alexander Selkirk
Odyssey, Book Twenty-three
To a Minor Poet of 1899
Texas
Poem Written in a Copy Of Beowulf
To a Sword at York Minster
Emanuel Swedenborg
Jonathan Edwards
Emerson
Camden, 1892
Paris, 1856
The Enigmas
The Instant
1964
The Stranger
To Whoever Is Reading Me
The Alchemist
Someone
Everness
Oedipus and the Enigma
Spinoza
Elegy
Adam Cast Fourth
To a Coin
Ode Written in 1966
Dream
The Sea
A Morning of 1649
To a Saxon Poet
To the Son

From For Six Strings
Where Can They Have Gone?
Milonga of Manuel Flores
A Blade in the Northside
Milonga of Don Nicanor Paredes
Milonga of Albornoz

From In Praise of Darkness
Prologue
Cambridge
New England, 1967
James Joyce
The Labyrinth
Things
Rubaíyát
June, 1968
The Guardian of the Books
Invocation to Joyce
Two Versions of "Knight, Death, and the Devil"
Fragments from an Apocryphal Gospel
His End and His Beginning
In Praise of Darkness

From The Gold of the Tigers
Prologue
Tankas
Susana Bombal
The Blind Man
The Search
1971
Things
A Bust of Janus Speaks
Poem of Quantity
The Watcher
To the German Language
1891
The Dream of Pedro Henríquez Ureña
The Palace
Hengist Wants Men (A.D. 449)
To a Cat
The Gold of the Tigers

From The Unending Rose
Prologue
I
The Dream
Browning Resolves to Be a Poet
The Suicide
To the Nightingale
I Am
A Blind Man
1972
Elegy
The Exile (1977)
Talismans
The Unending Rose

From The Iron Coin
Prologue
Nightmare
México
To Manuel Mujica Lainez
Herman Melville
The Moon
To Johannes Brahms
To My Father
Remorse
Baruch Spinoza
To a Version of I Ching
You Are Not the Others
The Iron Coin

From The History of the Night
Inscription
Alexandria A.D. 641
Alhambra
Music Box
I Am Not Even Dust
Iceland
Gunnar Thorgilsson (1816-1879)
Things That Might Have Been
The Mirror
A Saturday
The Causes
Adam Is Your Ashes
History of the Night

From The Limit
Inscription
Prologue
Descartes
The Two Cathedrals
Beppo
On Acquiring an Encyclopedia
That Man
Two Forms of Insomnia
The Cloisters
Note for a Fantastic Story
Epilogue
Happiness
The Maker
Yesterdays
Nostalgia for the Present
Poem
Inferno, V, 129
Fame
The Just
The Accomplice
Shinto
The Limit

From Atlas
My Last Tiger

From Los Conjurados
Inscription
Prologue
Christ on the Cross
The Afternoon
Elegy for a Park
Clouds (I)
Clouds (II)
The Leaves of the Cypress

The Web

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher