For twenty years, Ilan Stavans has been translating poetry from Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, French, Portuguese, Russian, German, Georgian, and other languages. His versions of Borges, Neruda, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ferreira Gullar, Raúl Zurita, and dozens of others have become classics. This volume, which includes poems from more than forty poets from all over the world, is testimony to a life dedicated to the pursuit of beauty through poetry in different languages.
"Lightning from the Stable" by Elizabeth Schön (Venezuela, 1921–2007)
You don't choose the abyss, the chaos, the nothingness They reach you in water running slowly for you not to be surprised by the absence of matter around you near the light of the soul calling the wing's passing flap of the earth you live in.
"This book makes an irresistible if accidental anthology, whose poems form a coherent conversation: works one translator-reader has loved enough to choose to bring into a supple, muscular English. . . . Stavans is a national treasure, increasing the available English storehouse of world poetry's languages, experiences, and multiplicity of vision."
Jane Hirschfield
"Stavan's Selected Translations could as well have been called: Delectable Translations. It shouldn't be noteworthy that almost half of the work is by women, but in the history of literary anthologies, such attentiveness is rare. Another surprise: not only do we encounter Stavans' best known translations of Latin American poetry, but also his translations of poets from Belarus, Switzerland, Georg
Forrest Gander
"What an extraordinary achievement. Here are exceptional new versions of foundational poems (by Akhmatova, Neruda, Lorca, Celan, Amichai, and others), alongside equally stunning work by less familiar poets. This book is not only a record of two decades of translation by one of our most brilliant and idiosyncratic writers: it is an essential anthology that belongs on the bookshelf of any serious re
