Borges Poetry Compilations
- At July 31, 2018
- By Great Quail
- In Borges
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Poetry is a mysterious chess, whose chessboard and whose pieces change as in a dream and over which I shall be gazing after I am dead.
—Jorge Luis Borges, preface to “The Self and the Other,” 1969.
Borges Works: Poetry Compilations
Although Borges is best known to the English-speaking world as a writer of short stories, he began his literary career as a poet, producing several volumes of verse before writing the ficciones that would make him famous. In 1960 he published El hacedor, a haunting fusion of poetry and prose first translated as Dreamtigers. The book signaled another change in direction for Borges. For the remainder of his life he largely considered himself a poet, publishing nine more books of verse and only two collections of short stories.
This section examines compilations of Borges’ poetry that have been translated into English. The books are presented in chronological order; with the exception of Selected Poems, which takes pride of place at the beginning. Clicking the image of a book takes you directly to Amazon.com. Wherever possible, links to the Internet Archive are provided. These “online editions” may or may not match the exact edition of the corresponding book.
Selected Poems
 Selected Poems By Jorge Luis Borges Edited by Alexander Coleman Viking, 1999 |
 Selected Poems By Jorge Luis Borges Edited by Alexander Coleman Penguin, 2000 |
In 1999 the literary world celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of Borges’ birth. This “Borges Centennial” was marked by numerous lectures, conferences, and artistic projects, from performances of Borges-themed tango to exhibitions of original manuscripts. One of the most anticipated events was Penguin-Viking’s publication of three massive volumes of Borges’ work, each dedicated to a different genre: his short stories, his non-fiction, and his poetry. It was the first time a single publisher had attempted to collect, curate, and translate the bulk of Borges’ impressive oeuvre, and it was justly celebrated as a watershed of Borges translation.
The second of these volumes was Selected Poems. Until its publication, English translations of Borges’ poetry had been difficult to obtain, generally found in literary magazines or out-of-print anthologies. Selected Poems finally brought the majority of Borges’ poetry to the English-speaking world, handsomely presented with the Spanish originals in parallel text.
Featuring over two hundred poems, the poems are organized chronologically by the original volume in which they appeared, from Fervor de Buenos Aires to Los conjurados. In his preface, editor Alexander Coleman explains that he “has gathered together old and revised translations and has commissioned new versions as an exhibition of diverse voices and tones in translation.” The translators worked from the final revisions of the poems found in Obras Completas, the sprawling set of Borges’ “Complete Works” finalized by Emecé Editores in 1989. Whenever Coleman opted for a previously published translation, it was edited to reflect Borges’ most recent Spanish revisions. A list of these repurposed translations is found at the end of the compilation. The translators include Willis Barnstone, Alexander Coleman, Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, Kenneth Krabbenhoft, Eric McHenry, W.S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Hoyt Rogers, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, Alan Trueblood, and John Updike.
Suffice it to say that Selected Poems is an essential book, a triumph of editing and translation. Nevertheless, if I may be permitted one quibble. From their hesitation to translate the “Bustos Domecq” stories and Evaristo Carriego to their conservative decisions regarding The Book of Imaginary Beings, Penguin’s work with Borges tends to err on the side of respectability; as if the editors are afraid to offend the ghost of El Maestro, or possibly acknowledge that Borges can also be playful and fun. This impulse also informs Selected Poems, which is openly complicit in Borges’ desire to edit his “baroque” and “foolish” past. English speakers have been waiting for years to hear Borges’ youthful voice, the unrestrained “ultraism” that sang from the original versions of Fervor de Buenos Aires, Luna de enfrente, and Cuaderno San Martín; let alone the untamed Evaristo Carriego. While Selected Poems is long overdue and entirely necessary, one can easily imagine a companion volume of translated originals—certainly featuring a lurid cover of old Palermo, artwork by Norah Borges and Xul Solar, and hopefully named ¡Ultraísmo!
Because all the works in Selected Poems originally appeared in one of the volumes described in the subsequent “Borges Poetry” pages, my comments on the poems themselves are found under each appropriate collection. This makes it easier to examine individual themes and remark on Borges’ development as a poet; it also allows me to incorporate the old Dutton translations as well, some of which do not appear in Selected Poems.
Selected Poems, 1923-1967
Selected Poems, 1923-1967
By Jorge Luis Borges
Edited and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
New York: Delacorte, 1972
Online at Internet Archive | Garden of Forking Paths [PDF]
Borges’ first collection of poems in English translation, this volume incorporates poems from Fervor de Buenos Aires to Elogio de la sombra. Until Viking’s Selected Poems was published in 1999, this was the English-speaking world’s main introduction to Borges’ early poetry. Penguin’s numerous imprints have shuffled the book around for years, from Delacorte to Delta to Allen Lane to Penguin Books UK. It’s now out of print.
Poems of the Night
Poems of the Night
By Jorge Luis Borges
Edited by Suzanne Jill Levine and Efrain Kristal
Penguin Classics, 2010
Of the sixty-odd pieces in Poems of the Night, over half of them were culled from Viking’s Selected Poems; the rest are new translations or works that failed to make the original cut. The poems are organized into chronological categories. The poems that appeared in Viking’s Selected Poems are marked by asterisks (*).
I. A Poet Dreams (1922–1957)
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- The Forging
- Break of Day*
- Patio*
- Street with a Pink Corner Store*
- A Leavetaking
- Afterglow
- Sepulchral Inscription*
- Remorse for Any Death*
- Inscription on Any Tomb*
- General Quiroga Rides to His Death in a Carriage*
- Deathwatch on the Southside*
- St. John’s Eve
- Almost a Last Judgment
- Dreamtigers*
- Insomnia
- The Cyclical Night*
- Conjectural Poem*
- Of Heaven and Hell*
- Museum: Quatrain, Boundaries, The Poet Proclaims His Renown*
II. The Gift of Blindness (1958–1977)
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- Poem of the Gifts*
- The Moon*
- Ars Poetica*
- Mirrors*
- Limits*
- The Golem*
- Someone*
- Where Can They Have Gone?*
- Heraclitus
- The Labyrinth*
- Two Versions of “Knight, Death, and the Devil”*
- In Praise of Darkness*
- The Gold of the Tigers*
- The Dream*
- The Suicide*
- Elegy*
- The Unending Rose*
- Ein Traum
- Signs
- Endymion on Latmos
- I Am Not Even Dust*
- A Saturday*
- Adam Is Your Ashes*
III. Waiting for the Night (1978–1985)
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- History of the Night*
- The Young Night
- Two Forms of Insomnia*
- Poem*
- Yesterdays*
- Sleep
- Dreams
- A Dream
- Someone Will Dream
- A Dream in Edinburgh
- The Horse
- A Nightmare
- Doomsday
- Midgarthormr
- Inferno, V. 129*
- Elegy for a Park*
- Haiku
- The Limit*
- Milonga of the Dead Man
- The Gift
Appendix
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- Insomnia (1921)
- Patio (edited version)
- Sepulchral Inscription (edited version)
Publisher’s Description: 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.
Sonnets
The Sonnets
By Jorge Luis Borges
Edited by Suzanne Jill Levine and Stephan Kessler
Penguin Classics, 2010
The Sonnets collects Borges’ complete sonnets, many of which were culled from Viking’s Selected Poems, and are printed here in a bilingual paperback with parallel texts. I haven’t had the chance to review this book, so here’s the information from Penguin Classics:
The complete sonnets of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—in English and Spanish. This landmark collection brings together for the first time in any language all of the sonnets of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. More intimate and personally revealing than his fiction, and more classical in form than the inventive metafictions that are his hallmark, the sonnets reflect Borges in full maturity, paying homage to many of his literary and philosophical paragons—Cervantes, Milton, Whitman, Emerson, Joyce, Spinoza—while at the same time engaging the mysteries immanent in the quotidian. A distinguished team of translators—Edith Grossman, Willis Barnstone, John Updike, Mark Strand, Robert Fitzgerald, Alastair Reid, Charles Tomlinson, and Stephen Kessler—lend their gifts to these sonnets, many of which appear here in English for the first time, and all of which accompany their Spanish originals on facing pages.
Borges Works
Main Page — Return to the Borges Works main page and index.
Fictions and Artifices — Short stories; the core Borges works.
Nonfiction — Collections of essays and criticism.
Collaborations with Bioy Casares — Fiction and anthologies written or edited with Adolfo Bioy Casares.
Collaborations with Others — Fiction and anthologies written or edited with others.
Poetry I — Early post-ultraísmo poetry, 1923 to 1943.
Poetry II — Mid-career collections from 1944 to 1969.
Poetry III — Late poetry books from 1969 to 1985.
Lectures, Conversations, and Interviews — Collections of Borges’ lectures, conversations, and interviews.
Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 25 August 2024
Main Borges Page: The Garden of Forking Paths
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com