The River Is Wide/El río es ancho: Twenty Mexican Poets, a Bilingual Anthology (Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series)

by Marlon L. Fick (editor)

This bilingual anthology of contemporary Mexican poetry reflects a broad continuum of styles and offers generous selections from the writings of twenty poets. Marlon Fick worked directly with each poet and selected the poems to be included here on the basis of aesthetic merit, the authors' reputations, and the representational quality of the work with regard to Mexican literature. Fick chose to include only twenty poets to allow the incorporation of generous selections from the writings of each. He includes long poems such as Alí Chumacero's "Responso del peregrino," a poem on the scale of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." The oldest poet is Chumacero, who is in his eighties, and the youngest, Hernan Bravo Varela, winner of Mexico's National Prize for Young Poets, is in his twenties. The other Mexican poets are Coral Bracho, Héctor Carreto, Elsa Cross, Juan Cú, Jorge Ruiz Esparza, Jorge Esquinca, Gloria Gervitz, Francisco Hernández, Elva Macias, Myriam Moscona, Rubén Bonifaz Nuño, Óscar Oliva, Jaime Sabines, Tomás Segovia, Lillian van den Broeck, Verónica Volkow, Francisco Ávila Fuentes, and Bernardo Emilio Pérez.
"What a wonderful anthology. Marlon Fick has picked well, and he has translated with an even--and bold--hand. I can't recommend it highly enough."--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway

Genres: Poetry

467 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2005

Reviews

[Rauan]

In places the translation's absolutely pathetic. And the poetry disappointing. (Fransisco Hernandez's particularly bad).

Veronica Volkow's voice is interesting.

But, really, the only reason to look at this book are the wonderful Lillian Van Der Broeck poems:

-----Maria's Head-------

When Maria loses her head, it's hard to find it amongst so much garbage.

When Maria breaks her head, she asks her genitals for some glue.

Maria's head is fragile: either she loses it or breaks it or shatters it. Or it turns into a sugar skull and she eats it.