The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Paperback]

J.D. McClatchy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 1996

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are:

Bangladesh--Taslima Nasrin
Chile--Pablo Neruda
China--Bei Dao, Shu Ting
El Salvador--Claribel Alegria
France--Yves Bonnefoy
Greece--Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos
India--A.K. Ramanujan
Israel--Yehuda Amichai
Japan--Shuntaro Tanikawa
Mexico--Octavio Paz
Nicaragua--Ernesto Cardenal
Nigeria--Wole Soyinka
Norway--Tomas Transtromer
Palestine--Mahmoud Darwish
Poland--Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz
Russia--Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Senegal--Leopold Sedar Senghor
South Africa--Breyten Breytenbach
St. Lucia, West Indies--Derek Walcott

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A number of editorial decisions prevent this collection from living up to its name. McClatchy, editor of The Yale Review, has decided to exclude "the extraordinary body of contemporary poetry in English," i.e., the work of poets from Britain, Ireland, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealandon the grounds that this work is "more readily available." The collection does embrace, however, poems written in English by such poets as Derek Walcott and Wole Soyinka, for whom the language is, as McClatchy notes, a "colonial bequest." While this decision may make sense for the U.K. and the U.S., it's hard to think of a New Zealand poet whose work is as readily available as, say, Pablo Neruda's, whose work is admitted. But whatever the book may lack in editorial vision, it does provide a respectable sampling of some of the best-known poets of our day, e.g., Czeslaw Milosz and Zbigniew Herbert, as well as a large number of poets whose work is less familiar, from Denmark's Henrik Nordbrandt to Japan's Ryuichi Tamura. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the collection is the number of poets here whose dissident beliefs and writings have led to imprisonment or exile. Among them are Dennis Brutus in South Africa and Nguyen Chi Thien in Vietnam. They serve as a potent reminder that in some parts of the world poetry and principle remain matters of life and death.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

If it is true, as Robert Frost said, that poetry is what is lost in translation, then it is an act of considerable courage to assemble a whole anthology of translated poems. Inevitably, some readers will be surprised and disappointed by some of the editor's choices (no Julia de Burgos? none of Jorge Luis Borges's verse? why so little Milosz?), but the volume is still a broad and generous digest of recent poetry, good and even great. Some of the poets represented will be familiar; others are still too little known here and should be welcome discoveries to many readers?Rutger Kopland of the Netherlands, Germany's Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Israel's Dan Pagis, Argentina's Roberto Juarroz. Many of the translators are themselves poets (Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, and Seamus Heaney among them), and they do much to alleviate the frustrations of translation. Highly recommended.?Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (June 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679741151
• ISBN-13: 978-0679741152
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetry Worth Reading from around the World, December 12, 2000

By 

Kevin Christianson (Cookeville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (Paperback)

A solid selection of poems written by major poets from around the globe. Diverse cultures represented. The quality of the translations is very good, making the poems accessible to English-speaking readers. One recurrent problem: no explanatory notes are provided to help English-speakers, particularly younger readers and college students, grasp the historical, political, social, or cultural allusions in some poems. For example, the Viet Nam poet Nguyen's "Model Citizens of the Regime" takes on fuller meaning if the reader knows that the "jail" referred to in the poem is not a penal institution for criminals but actually a communist re-education camp to which Vietnamese children were sent to be indoctrinated in Marxist ideology. Having a bit of this geopolitical, social, or cultural context, readers can gain a fuller understanding of the poems. One small complaint: the anthology was published prior to the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska's receipt of the Nobel Prize, and therefore the head note for her selection does not make note of that honor.

Given the general lack of interest in poetry, especially poetry from other countries, we're nonetheless lucky to have this anthology.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another gem, May 13, 2003

By 

Jazzy Jake "jazzyjake" (Severna Park, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (Paperback)

Given the daunting task of selecting from, literally, a world of poets, McClatchy succeeds admirably. Once again his editing has me running out to buy individual books by the poets in the anthology.

Now if he would do a book of "Contemporary English Language [But Non-American] Poetry" to offer closure....

An aspect of McClatchy's editing that I like is that the selection per poet is large enough to get a good introduction - the opposite is a fault of most anthologies - though this does cause worthy poets to excluded.

I would love for some publisher to publish this and Contemporary American Poetry in good hardbound versions. They are prized members of my library, but, sadly, are not durable.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Find, February 20, 2006

By 

L. Lochner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (Paperback)

This poetry anthology is a great find. I discovered many talented world poets with this book. Good information about each poet.