Customer Reviews

Duelo del lenguaje/Language Duel (Spanish Edition)

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In this book, celebrated Puerto Rican writer Rosario Ferré confronts English and Spanish in a Duel. This book of poetry is very interesting, on the left pages we have the poems in English and on the right we have the poem in Spanish. The comparison is very interesting and it is fun to decipher which was the original language of the poem. It seems they were all written in Spanish first, but I'm not sure.
The translations into English are excellent and sometimes (rarely) the poem is better in English than in Spanish.
Some poems are really good, and others are well, bad amd boring.
I recommend this book because the comparison and contrast of the two languages is extremely interesting.

I emphasize first my one criticism of this work: its name implies that it is a "dual-language" work, designed as a side-by-side translation with English and Spanish. This is true in some sense, but the translations are done loosely to maintain poetic splendor.

Moderate- to advanced-level Spanish speakers, as well as English lovers of poetry, will certainly appreciate these wonderful poems. Rosario Ferre's talent as a poet should go unchallenged; her metaphors and imagery speak strongly to her talent as an artist.

For those Spanish students brave enough to test the waters of reading Spanish with only a loose guide in English, this is an absolutely wonderful collection of poems, covering a variety of topics in cultura puertorriquena, ustadounidense y europa.