Bilingual Poetry

Tuesday, 24 March 2009 00:00

These are some good books to start with when beginning to read bilingual or translated poetry.

Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology
Edited by Stephen Tapscott
Tapscott, a literature professor at MIT, guides readers through more than 75 Spanish poets with the original-language versions and translations set side by side.

Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems
By Jimmy Santiago Baca
Baca published this book in 1979―the year he was released from prison and earned his GED. Baca confronts racial discrimination and promotes social justice through his poetry, finding salvage in the art after spending five years in a maximum security prison. These poems have some words in Spanish, but are mostly in English.

Stories and Poems/Cuentos y Poesias: A Dual-Language Book
By Rubén Darío
This book features an introduction to the life of Nicaraguan poet and essayist Darío as well as a large sample of the best of his work with English translations.

Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands
By Martín Espada
Espada, a lawyer of Puerto Rican descent, uses humor and descriptive imagery to convey a political message about social justice. This bilingual edition features side by side translations from Spanish to English

Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems
By Juan Felipe Herrera
This collection of poetry begins with Herrera's earlier work and continues into his newer work, transcending through generations of living as and writing about being a Chicano in America.

Poet in New York
By Federico Garcia Lorca
This book was written during Lorca's nine months at Columbia University at the beginning of the Great Depression and is widely considered one of the most important books Lorca produced. The poems portray Lorca in New York facing a city populated with poverty, racism, social turbulence, and solitude.

Borders
By Pat Mora
Although the borders Mora is often referring to in this book is the border between male and female, her Hispanic culture also influences her poems about immigration and discrimination in America.

100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor
By Pablo Neruda
Stephen Tapscott translates this famous collect 14-line sonnets that Neruda wrote between the years of 1955 and 1957 for Matilde Urrutia, his third wife. The book is divided into four sections for each part of the day: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night.

The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems
By Pablo Neruda
A handful of translators joined forces to revisit some of Neruda's best work in this collection. The Austin Chronicle called it "the best introduction to Neruda available in English." Neruda was born in Chile in 1904 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Eagle or Sun
By Octavio Paz
In this book of surrealist prose poems, Mexican poet Octavio Paz discusses mythlogy and the abuse of language, among other things. All poems are translated into English.

The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition
By César Vallejo
Peruvian poet Vallejo never achieved the type of fame Neruda or Lorca did, but he is widely considered their equal in terms of Spanish poets. This is a complete collection of this poet's work, with English translations by Clayton Eshleman.

Written by Chelsea Hodson You are reading Bilingual Poetry articles