Customer Reviews

Antonio Machado: Selected Poems

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Machado was perhaps the most "poetic" among all the poets from Spain's "Generation of 98" movement. His are simple poems of love, the countryside, clouds, mountains, rivers, about the absence of Leonor, his beloved wife, who died early. This is the Spain which suffers in silence, without the tormented and exhalted screams of other poets, like Leon Felipe. The small towns and cities where Machado spent most of his life come alive in his easy, lucid verses. As said before, the absence of Leonor covers his poetry with the longing of persons, places and things long gone. Not experimental, urban, or visionary poetry: only the intelligent reflections of the poet on his surroundings, past and present.

I bought this collection of Machado's poems after enjoying "Last Night I Had a Dream" from a different anthology. This edition has both the Spanish and the English translation on facing pages, and knowing very little Spanish, I had to read them in English. Machado's poems are achingly beautiful when he writes of his native Castile in Spain; I can't judge how good the translation is to the original, but the poems are certainly beautiful in English. Selections from his proverbs require quite a bit of reflection, and here I felt at a distinct loss at not being able to read the Spanish. This collection contains poems from throughout his career, so the reader can see where his feelings changed or remained constant over time.

Having much admired Machado in different anthologies and translations (by Robert Bly) I was left very disappointed with this translation - it attempts to follow the Spanish too closely and loses a lot of poetic force. Some poems fall completely flat because of the unfortunate translation - in fact I barely recognized a poem I absoluely love: "Rainbow at Night" compare the Robert Bly translation with Alan Trueblood's if you ever get a chance and you'll know what I mean.

On the other hand if you know Spanish this is a good volume.