Jose Lezama Lima: Selections (Poets for the Millennium, 4) [Paperback]

Jose Lezama Lima (Author), Ernesto Livon-Grosman (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520234766 | ISBN-13: 978-0520234765 | Publication Date: March 14, 2005 | Edition: 1

Recognized as one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century, José Lezama Lima, born in Cuba in 1910, is associated with the Latin American neo-baroque and has influenced several generations of writers in and out of Cuba, including such prominent poets as Severo Sarduy and Néstor Perlongher. Lezama Lima's vision of America in a continental sense stands at the fertile confluence of indigenous, African, and European influences. A crucial experimental writer, he has been known in English chiefly for his novel Paradiso, while little of his poetry has been translated. This anthology is a comprehensive introduction to Lezama Lima's poetry. It presents for the first time in English a generous selection of his poems, as well as an interview, essays, and critical work on his poetics. Ernesto Livon-Grosman has selected elegant and precise translations by James Irby, G.J. Racz, Nathaniel Tarn, and Roberto Tejada. His insightful introduction places the poet in the wider context of Cuban and Latin American cultural history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jose Lezama Lima is a rare writer, both a great novelist and a great poet. He is highly regarded as a true father to the current Renaissance in Latin American poetry. Good translations of Lezama Lima's work are of the highest importance and any post-Joycean reader should welcome them with gratitude." - Jose Kozer, author of Anima and Una Huella Destartalada"

From the Inside Flap

"A delightful and informative anthology, an indispensable entry into the brilliant neo-baroque universe of the great Cuban poet."--Suzanne Jill Levine, author of Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions

"José Lezama Lima is a rare writer, both a great novelist and a great poet. He is highly regarded as a true father to the current Renaissance in Latin American poetry. Good translations of Lezama Lima's work are of the highest importance and any post-Joycean reader should welcome them with gratitude."--José Kozer, author of Ánima and Una Huella Destartalada

"Lezama Lima is legendary. Among 20th century imaginations his is the most enthusiastically centrifugal. He adored the complexity of poetry, its baroque, overwhelming inclusiveness. His work is the wild, silent whoop of intuition leaping the synaptic canyon that separates the rational and familiar from the improbable and exquisite. His poetry was influential but widely considered untranslatable, and for half a century English versions of his poems were scarce as snake fat. Now, at last, he comes racing across the borders of English, testing and expanding its limits."--Forrest Gander, author of Torn Awake

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Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (March 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520234766
• ISBN-13: 978-0520234765
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,716,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Long Overdue, February 15, 2005

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Driver9 (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jose Lezama Lima: Selections (Poets for the Millennium, 4) (Paperback)

This is the first time any of Lezama Lima's work has appeared in translation since "Paradiso" was translated in the early 1970s. I believe it is the first time any of his poetry has been transalted for a single volume. So it is a great thing that such a literary light as Lezama should finally appear in English. But did we have to wait so long.

The poems are magnificent and lyrical, dense just as his other writing is, like creeping along in an imaginary jungle. I was also very pleasantly surprised to see the essay by Julio Cortazar, the Argentinian writer, himself a bright star. It appeared in the 1970s in a book entitled "Around the day in 80 Worlds" which translated into English but quickly vanished. It was a rare treat to see it included in the volume.

If you are even remotely interested in the materpieces that have come out of Latin America in the last generation, please have a look a Lezama Lima. He has been ignored for too long.