Configurations

"[Paz], who has had a previous volume [Selected Poems of Octavio Paz] in English, has become the most highly praised poet of the generation immediately after Vallejo and Neruda. The present book, containing work since 1957, makes clear certain drawbacks that the Spanish American literary tradition has as well. at its best, as in Vallejo and Neruda, and Vicente Huidobro, the Latin American drives forward into 'what has never been named,' into states of anguish the Europeans nevermanaged to describe; at its worst it leans into soft oceans of romantic mush, where all women are fiery and all roses are sacred and all kisses are eternal....Paz oddly fails to outgrow his addiction to poetic Disneylands as he gets older: his long poem 'Blanco,' published five years ago in Spanish and translated here entire, is a disaster.Paz, Octavio is the author of 'Configurations' with ISBN 9780811201506 and ISBN 0811201503.