Poems of the Night: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Jorge Luis Borges (Author), Suzanne Jill Levine (Editor), Efrain Kristal (Editor, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2010 | Series: Penguin Classics

Revered for his magnificent works of fiction, Jorge Luis Borges thought of himself primarily as a poet. Poems of the Night is a moving collection of the great literary visionary's poetic meditations on nighttime, darkness, and the crepuscular world of visions and dreams, themes that speak implicitly to the blindness that overtook Borges late in life-and yet the poems here are drawn from the full span of Borges's career. Featuring such poems as "History of the Night" and "In Praise of Darkness" and more than fifty others in luminous translations by an array of distinguished translators-among them W.S. Merwin, Christopher Maurer, Alan Trueblood, and Alastair Reid-this volume brings to light many poems that have never appeared in English, presenting them en face with their Spanish originals.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Original edition (March 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143106007
• ISBN-13: 978-0143106005
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #706,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mostly reprints; buy Selected Poems instead, September 16, 2010

By 

Edward T. Brading - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Poems of the Night: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Penguin's publication of this book is curious. Of the 63 or so poems compiled, 39 are reprinted from Selected Poems, which is a much more comprehensive poetry collection, with over 200 poems, published by Penguin just eleven years ago. Every Borges fan ought to own Selected Poems. So the question becomes whether the extra 24 or so poems, plus earlier versions of two poems, are worth the price of the book -- not a question that one should have to ask where Borges is concerned. And collecting poems based on the themes of dreaming and blindness, as this book does, takes the fun out of the reader's doing that for himself. So one star for the book's concept, but five stars for Borges, for an average of three.