Selected Poems (First Edition)

Borges, Jorge Luis

ISBN 10: 0670849413 / ISBN 13: 9780670849413

Published by Viking, New York, 1999

About this Item

Viking, New York, 1999. First edition. First printing (with full number line including 1). Hardbound. Very Fine in a very fine jacket. A clean tight copy, with publisher's price intact on front jacket flap ($40.00). Comes with archival-quality mylar jacket protector. Smoke-free. Ships in well padded box. Editor: Andrew Coleman.

Seller Inventory # Lit-B-2022-3

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Selected Poems (First Edition)
• Publisher: Viking, New York
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN 10: 0670849413
• ISBN 13: 9780670849413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Spanish Literature

About this title

Synopsis

A bilingual collection of more than two hundred of the best poems written by a giant of modern literature, the largest English selection every published, includes many poems never before translated. 17,500 first printing. First serial, Harper's.

Review

During his life, Jorge Luis Borges wore many hats. He was, variously, a poet, an essayist, a short-story writer, a librarian, and, for a short time, a poultry inspector. Born in Argentina in 1899, he lived for several years in Europe before eventually returning home to Buenos Aires in the early 1920s. It was here that Borges started his career as a writer. At the age of 24, he published his first volume of poetry, and though he would go on to garner considerable acclaim as an essayist and crafter of fiction, he always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This bilingual edition of Selected Poems, edited by Alexander Coleman, gathers together 200 poems from different periods of Borges's life, including some that will be appearing in English for the first time.

Whether he was writing fiction, essays, or poetry, there were certain themes and subjects that Borges returned to time and again. His home town became a favourite topic--in his first collection, Fervor de Buenos Aires, he wrote: "My soul is in the streets / of Buenos Aires," a sentiment that remained constant throughout his life. This collection reveals other preoccupations as well--with history in all its permutations, Borges's own ancestry, and his fascination with metaphysics, mazes, mirror images, and the blurry line between parallel realities:

The celibate white cat surveys himself in the mirror's clear-eyed glass, not suspecting that the whiteness facing him and those gold eyes that he's not seen before in ramblings through the house are his own likeness. Who is to tell him the cat observing him is only the mirror's way of dreaming?

This sumptuous companion volume to Andrew Hurley's new translation of Collected Fictions boasts a stellar cast of translators, including W.S. Merwin, Mark Strand, and John Updike among others. Admirers of Borges will find Selected Poems a fitting memorial to the great man; and for those have never had the pleasure of reading him before, this book is a wonderful introduction. --Alix Wilber