The Modernist Trend in Spanish-American Poetry: A Collection of Representative Poems of the Modernist Movement and the Reaction Open Access

A pioneer work in the translation of Latin American poetry into English, this book has now been reissued. There are twenty poets included, mostly Modernists, but a few Post-Modernists, like Borges; a perceptive, though somewhat dated, essay introducing them; 81 poems translated with the original Spanish on facing pages; finally, 90 pages of informative, interpretative commentary, sometimes off the mark, as in the case of Neruda.

The translator endeavors to steer a middle course between literary translation and poetical paraphrase. The results are mixed: some poems are felicitously rendered, while others are stiff and graceless, sprinkled with unfortunate archaisms (“thou” and “thy”).