Abriendo Puertas = Always We Begin Again - Antologia de literatura en espanol Tomo I (Spanish Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book along with "Tomo I" are without a doubt the AP Spanish Lit Exam. I had both books during the last school year and 4 of the featured stories in the books appeared on the MC section and another 4 appeared on the free response section. Bottom line if you are looking to take AP Spanish Lit exam this is the book for you. In addition it is a great read for anyone who is wants to start reading Spanish literature. The books feature a variation of authors from all of Mexico, South and Central America, and Spain. Stories come with a brief biography of the author and provide some background of the writers. In addition colloquial phrases and complex words are defined in the same page they are printed and are marked with numbers making them easy to find in the story and list. In short I really liked this book and recommend it to anyone taking the AP Lit exam or interested in Spanish literature.
-Alex

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100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (Texas Pan American Series) (English and Spanish Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)I hate to rain on everyone's parade but Stephen Tapscott's translation of Pablo Neruda's evocative and beautiful poetry is crass, misleading and patronizing. It is an insult to the memory of a great poet and a disgrace to translation in general. I have read the collection several times and it angers me each time to see what this man has done to poetry that is subtle as it is open ended. Every single poem in this collection is manipulated my Mr. Tapscott. He constantly replaces words when perfect English equivalents are available. He changes the tenses in which the poems are written and inserts his own concepts when he deems necessary. Worst of all he "explains" the poems in his translation. Time and again Tapscott fails to see the beauty of an ambiguity intended by Neruda and procedes to write phrases that are one dimensional and often fail to convey even the basic core of the work. As to the sound and rythm of the collection, Tapscott goes out of his way to destroy the structure of the poems and their gentle flow. It is a shame that English speakers interested in Pablo Neruda's poetry have only this translation by which to judge his genius. Please save your money and wait for a translation that better represents these great poems.

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Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems (Edición bilingüe) Review

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(More customer reviews)A MUST HAVE. Es sin duda un libro que vas a cuidar y conservar con mucho cariño. La recoleccion de poemas es brillante, exquisita, de primera. Quien no ha leido a Neruda? Lo bello del libro es que ofrece los poemas en el idioma que fueron escritos y en Ingles. La traduccion al ingles es excelente. No hay mucho que hablar sobre este libro, los poemas son una obra de arte y que esten a la vez traducidos al Ingles ya es mas que un buen regalo. No pienses dos veces en obtenerlo.

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In his long life as a poet, Pablo Neruda succeeded in becoming what many poets have aspired to but never achieved: a public voice, a voice not just for the people of his country but for his entire continent. Widely translated, he probably reached more readers than any poet in history; justly so, for, as he often said, his "poet's obligation" was to become a voice for all those who had no voice, an aspiration that stemmed from his long-time commitment to the communist faith. Born in 1904 in the rainy south of Chile, he enjoyed from an early age the luck of attention. One of his first books, Twenty Love Poems, became a bible for lovers in the Spanish language, and confirmed him in his poet's vocation. At the same time he pursued a lifelong career as a diplomat, serving in a series of consular posts in the Far East and Europe. In 1971, while serving as Chilean ambassador to France, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In a famous essay, "On Impure Poetry," Neruda calls for "a poetry as impure as old clothes, as a body with its foodstains and its shame, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, wakefulness, prophesies, declarations of love and hate, stupidities, shocks, idylls, political beliefs, negations, doubts, affirmations, and taxes."

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Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual-Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Spanish and English Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a newcomer to the poetry of Pablo Neruda. "Twenty Poems and a Song of Despair" is simply one of the best volumes of poetry I have ever read. What a vast horizon opened up to me when I picked up this book! Rarely have I encountered a poet that so palpably evokes longing. Few other poets have Neruda's ability to weave images. These poems burrow into the heart.
My Spanish is not what it should be, but I was able to read most of the poetry here in the original. For those who know no Spanish, do not be deterred. This volume is the work of not just one but two masterful poets. Merwin's translations are amazing and wholly recommendable. Striking images and a yearning spirit fill the English translations as well as Neruda's originals.
I was also caught off guard by poem XVI. I was reading along, thinking how I had not read poetry this full of longing and desire since I last read Tagore's "Gitanjali" ..., when lo and behold, Poem XVI is a Spanish paraphrase of a Tagore poem...small world.
Neruda's poems are of filled with a powerful Eros. Yet, to me, they fall a little short in comparison to those of Tagore (whose love is a spiritual longing). However, the comparison is clearly between two giants of the art.
I give "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" a strong recommendation.

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