Selected Poems

I always find it difficult to review a book, for so many thoughts keep jumping around at a time in my mind but the suitable words to express those thoughts always seem to deceiving me, and even more so difficult to review poetry, for (I feel) poetry itself is creation of refined art, it is a like something suspended in a thin air and which could be interpreted in so many ways, like a free flowing water stream which takes the color of landscapes it traverses through; nevertheless I try to write s [...]

‘My God, my dreamer, keep dreaming me’Borges. I simply adore the man. Every word from his pen traces a warm euphoria through my veins. If drug dealers sold books, Borges would be what you get when you ask ‘for that dank chronic, yo’. The man restructures reality and imparts infinity with prose alone. If you are unfamiliar with this writer, please, do yourself a massive favor and pick up a copy of Ficciones or even just find the text of Garden of the Forking Paths online here. As a discla [...]

God has created nights well-populatedwith dreams, crowded with mirror images,so that man may feel that he is nothing morethan vain reflection. That's what frightens us.Was it Dr. Johnson who marveled over Montaigne, how could he know what I had been thinking? It doesn't matter, it could have been Walter Benjamin pondering Spinoza on both of those frontiers. History is mute, amused sufficiently with bumps and reversals. Plagues and witch hunts pass the time. It could also have been Boris Johnson, [...]

Sobre os poemas não opino, já que desconfio não ter entendido grande coisa da maioria deles. Já os contos são divinais, souberam a pouco!ARTE POÉTICA«Olhar o rio que é de tempo e águaE recordar que o tempo é outro rio,Saber que nos perdemos como o rioE que os rostos passam como a água.Sentir que a vigília é outro sonoQue sonha não sonhar e que a morteQue teme a nossa carne é essa morteDe cada noite, que se chama sono.Ver no dia ou até no ano um símboloQuer dos dias do homem quer [...]

the justa man who cultivates his garden, as voltaire wished.he who is grateful for the existence of music.he who takes pleasure in tracing an etymologyo workmen playing, in a cafe in the south, a silent game of chesse potter, contemplating a color and a forme typographer who sets this page well, though it may not please him.a woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.he who strokes a sleeping animal.he who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.he who is grateful for the e [...]

I am posting this, and giving it three stars primarily because of my anger and frustration at his estate and relevant publishers for refusing to let the incredible translations done by Barnes and Mezey be published. If you do not know the story you can read more here borges.pitt/sites/defThis, for example, is a translation I love deeply and is far superior to that in this collection:RainEvening, a sudden clearing of the mist,For now a fine, soft rain is freshening.It falls and it did fall. Rain [...]

This hefty collection draws from fourteen cycles of Borges' poetry, spanning over 60 years; so I'm expecting to be reading it for a while. The plan is to review sections as I go alongFervor de Buenos Aires: 5/5These poems are intimate, mystical, and exquisitely beautiful. If Neruda's preferred time is twilight, Borges' is 4:00am, outside on the streets of Buenos Aires, when "those who are dreaming the world are few / and only the ones who have been up all night retain, / ashen and barely outline [...]

Borges poetry is written with the same fierce intelligence, austere passion, and Escheresque creativity with which he fashions his brilliant fictions and essays; and the same cerebral steeliness that occasionally mars his stories rarely shows to the same effect here. This bilingual edition is a treasure chest, a compendium of the life's work in verse by perhaps South America's best poet after Neruda. The Spanish originals are absolutely magnificent - rich and fluid, with all the latin-sired nobi [...]

Ars PoeticaTo look at the river made of time and waterAnd remember that time is another river,To know that we are lost like the riverAnd that faces dissolve like water.To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleepWhile it is another dream, and that the deathThat our flesh goes in fear of is that deathWhich comes every night and is called sleep.To see in the day or in the year a symbolOf the days of man and of his years,To transmute the outrage of the yearsinto a music, a murmur of voices, and [...]

JLB states: "All verse should have two obligations: to communicate precise instance and to touch us physically, as the presence of the sea does" and reading this thick selection of poems I start to feel that although satisfying and sometimes even truly startling, mostly his poetry doesn't touch me. He's an undeniable tower of wisdom in literature, but you don't experience the same enviable dizziness in his verse. "Whoever reads my words is inventing them", he says and immediately leaves space to [...]

Lost in Translation. That's my experience with this book. Overall, I still enjoy Borges' writing. He puts you into a dream like state. I just don't think poetry is his strong point. Maybe it's the translators to some of these poems. The times Borges talks about his homeland or the people he knew, I had no idea what he was talking about. I blame the publication not giving enough footnotes and explanation. One thing I like a lot with this publication though is they had the poems in English and in [...]

Depois dos jogadores se terem ido,Depois do tempo os ter consumido,Decerto não terá cessado o rito.No oriente incendiou-se esta guerraCujo anfiteatro é hoje a terra.Como o outro, este jogo é infinito.(Xadrez, Jorge Luís Borges)

Se va al carajo este viejo. Què hermoso es leer una Obra Completa de un Autor, es una experiencia ùnica opino. Hay mucha belleza en este libro.

Shinto When misfortune confounds usin an instant we are savedby the humblest actionsof memory or attention:the taste of fruit, the taste of water,that face returned to us in dream,the first jasmine flowers of November,the infinite yearning of the compass,a book we thought forever lost,the pulsing of a hexameter,the little key that opens a house,the smell of sandalwood or library,the ancient name of a street,the colourations of a map,an unforeseen etymology,the smoothness of a filed fingernail,th [...]

Borges apparently always fancied himself more a poet than a novelist or literary theorist - which I found intriguing as his work in prose is some of the most ingenuous and magical writing ever committed to paper. Needless to say I was interested to see what Borges could conjure in his poetry. I was not disappointed, the man was simply brilliant. I can't recommend him, and this collection of his poetry in particular, highly enough!

الرابط4shared/office/JwOOCB3

A very nice selection of the poetry of Borges with both Spanish texts and translations by a variety of translators, the book includes the poet's prologues, inscriptions, and epilogues to the various volumes from which the selections came. It's all here, labyrinths, tigers, knives and swords, mirrors, dreams, death, blindness, libraries, books, Saxons, Norse mythology, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Poe, the Bible, and Buenos Aires, and all transformed by the genius of Borges into subli [...]

Interesting to read this after 10 years. Clearly I was just a little concerned by death.I'm going to compare this to When Harry Met Sally (yeah, it's weird):Harry: Do you ever think about death?Sally: Yes. Harry: Sure you do, a fleeting thought that jumps in and out of the transient of your mind. I spend hours, I spend days Sally: And you think that makes you a better person. Harry: Look, when the shit comes down I'm gonna be prepared and you're not that's all I'm saying. 'Nuff said.

Jorge Luis Borges me encanta en sus poemas jjenos de emociones e sensibilidad,nos lleva al profundo del corazon!

"أن تحدق في نهر من الزمان والماء،وتتذكر أن الزمان نهر آخر.أن تحيل إساءة السنيننغمًا وصوتًا.ذهبي هو الفن، متواضع وأبدي،متواتر كالفجر."

Somewhere in this large, uneven volume of bilingual facing pages, Borges writes: "there is no poet, however mediocre, who has not written the best line in literature, but also the most miserable ones. Beauty is not the privilege of a few illustrious names. It would be rare if this book did not contain one single secret line worthy of staying with you to the end." And he's right. Most of the work here isn't memorable— of 200+ poems, only a few have that vertiginous, shocking effect that his bes [...]

"Garcia Lorca seems to me quite a minor poetHis poetry iscorative, not entirely serious," said Borges of Lorca, in a criticism that applies much better to his own poetry than to any of Federico's. Borges's poetry, especially of the later years, becomes repetitive, relatively emotionless, and quite prose-y. What is compelling about his essays and stories becomes, in my humble opinion, convoluted in the form of verse. Clauses pile up and up and up, and the image becomes almost completely lost. To [...]

I just fail to understand why so many people love this book. Is this considered poetry nowadays?In short, his style is ridiculous. When readint "To a cat, I couldn't help laughing out loud. "Mirrors are not more silentnor the creeping dawn more secretive;in the moonlight, you are that pantherwe catch sight of from afar.By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,we look for you in vain;More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,yours is the solitude, yours the secret.Your haunch allo [...]

Borges is simply my favorite poet of the Twentieth Century. More than Frost or Neruda or Eliot or any of the other heavyweights, he speaks to me. Therefore, I loved this book with most of the best poems from throughout his career.I know just enough Espanol to get the gist of (usually) and enjoy the language of these poems in their original form but having the English translations on facing pages is quite helpful. These translations are generally pretty decent and some quite excellent.Borges is b [...]

Οφείλω να ομολογήσω ότι γνώριζα μόνο το πεζογραφικό έργο του Μπόρχες, το οποίο λατρεύω και πάντα με συνεπαίρνει. Διαβάζοντας τα ποιήματά του, ανακάλυψα ακόμα μια πιο ευαίσθητη πλευρά του, η οποία όμως εμπεριέχει την ίδια διαύγεια που εκπέμπουν τα άλλα αναγνώσματά του. Λοιπ� [...]

Daylight leaks in, and sluggishly I surfacefrom my own dreams into the common dreamand things assume again their proper placesand their accustomed shapes. Into this presentthe Past intrudes, in all its dizzying range --the centuries-old habits of migrationin birds and men, the armies in their legionsall fallen to the sword, and Rome and Carthage.The trappings of my day also come back:my voice, my face, my nervousness, my luck.If only Death, that other waking-up,would grant me a time free of all [...]

Borges was a remarkable poet, a remarkable writer in every sense. He could bring together in his poems so many disparate elements: history, metaphysics, biography, personal observation and weave it all into a powerfully sympathetic view of the human condition. He was someone deeply inspired by ideas. Though one sees this more easily in his prose, it is not absent in his poetry. But what makes him truly great, deserving of the multiple Nobel Prize nominations he received, is that he is not simply [...]

ثمة بيت لفرلين لن أتذكره مرة اخرى ثمة شارع جانبي محرم علي ان امشي فيه ثمة مرآة عكست صورتي لآخر مرة ولن تعكسها مرة اخرى ثمة باب أغلقته لآخر مرة ولن أغلقه بعد ذلك أبدا من بين الكتب في مكتبتي ها انا انظر اليهاثمة كتب لن افتحها أبدا مرة اخرى في الصيف القادم سأكون قد اكملت الخمسين:ا� [...]

Borges's words are mystical and lovely and deep. They encompass the wisdom of a life lived and not lived. At times, his words are labyrinthine and complex and other times a simple three-word sentence leaves you in pieces. I absolutely love this collection. I think everyone should read it at least once.(And he was an advocate of libraries!)

pretty good. i enjoyed having the spanish version and english version across the page from each other like that. i don't really know much spanish, but i read the spanish lines after the english lines anyway just to see.