Product Description
A luminous portrait of the Prophet, in the Islamic tradition.

Muhammad is a shimmering, lyrical biography of the Prophet, composed from the words of Muslims throughout the centuries. Drawing on a variety of Islamic sources, from the hadith, or sayings of Muhammad and his companions, to Abbasid and Persian texts, Weinberger weaves a subtle, mystical prose poem, spanning Muhammad's birth and childhood; his adolescence, miracles and marriages; to the isra and miraj, his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and ascent into heaven, with the angel Jibril (Gabriel) as his guide. The result is a vivid triptych that presents the final prophet of Islam with extraordinary clarity.

At a time when the Muslim world is being demonized in much of the media Muhammad provides a sense of the awe surrounding this historical and sacred figure.

Customer Reviews (2)

Well Done!
BismillahirRahmanirRahim,

Selam Aleykum,

Wonderful, Mr. Eliot Weinberger. Simply Wonderful. I wish the historical text which you translated the content from (the Persian, I believe), was also available in full, unabridged form, - and translated by yourself. It would no doubt be a treasure yet unexposed to the West. However, here you have parceled a small jewel from that rich bounty and and shared it with us, and for that I am grateful. Thank you, and Selam Aleykum to you.

A little book, a silly book (to paraphrase Lawrence of Arabia)
This is an embarrassingly bad book, and frankly, the only semi-interesting question it raises is why Verso decided to publish it at all. Whatever the answer, I genuinely regret having bought it, but can't in good conscience bring myself to sell it to anyone (or even give it away). Even at a slim 56 pages, it's utterly unreadable--and the readable parts only raise the question of whether one ought to respond to the text by laughing or by crying.

This is an author who has, without discernible purpose, regurgitated all of the hoary myths about Muhammad from the hagiographic literature that we good little Muslims learned at age five at our grandmothers' knees (and discounted even then). Having done so, he inexplicably offers up the result as something that's supposed to make a serious claim on the credence of educated English-speaking readers. Alas, it's not biography, it's not historiography, it's not poetry, and it's not really prose, either. It contains no verifiable facts, and it doesn't even indicate whether, in the end, the author admires Muhammad for the factoids he managed to attribute to him. (The author's recent criticisms of Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept is a travesty and disgrace all its own.)

A joke, in short. In fact, the book is such a nullity that it's a minor sin to have devoted this many sentences to it. So let me end this review straightaway and sin no more. ... Read more

Product Description
When Octavio Paz died, Mexico lost a tribe of writers. He was a surrealist disciple of Andre Breton, an admiring imitator of Alexander Pope; now a radical experimentalist, now an autobiographer and confessional writer. European by inclination, he brought unanticipated tonalities into Spanish. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Weak
Inevitably, essays on 9/11 written in the days and weeks afterward suffer from the passage of time and new facts and information.These ruminations seem horribly stale and somewhat knee-jerk leftist. The essayist isn't just a poor man's Howard Zinn, but a very, very poor man's Howard Zinn.(And I like Howard Zinn.)Why do we care about his ruminations, again?He's a translator and editor of Latin American and Chinese poetry and prose.I'm not sure his thoughts on 9/11 are worth much more than my dog groomer's.

Weak
Have read enormous amounts on this topic.This is by far the weakest, least informative, most useless material available.Don't bother.

A necessary book--this review will probably get me arrested
Weinberger is one of my favorite essayists.He will skewer anyone and do so with absolute style.He is not a "crrrritic" so much as a commentator.So 9/12.It is frightening to read your own fears mirrored in someone else, to be able to vocalize terror at one's own government.Oddly, the most frightening portrait is not of Bush, that weak-minded tool of his own advisors, but of Condie Rice as "Xena, Warrior Princess."We are in huge trouble here.Indeed we need regime change here as it was needed in Iraq (no, I don't think Saddam was bum-rapped: he was a monster)--but the mood of the nation has been so manipulated that it's unlikely a change will occur back toward the left in my lifetime.I'm 61...and I hear the marching charging feet (yeah).

Read this little book.Be afraid. ... Read more

Product Description
A stunning selection of poems from the great twentieth-century Dutch poet.

Against the Forgetting presents the work of an important twentieth-century Dutch poet, Hans Faverey. The first extensive selection of his poetry in English, this collection brings together poems from his eight published volumes of poetry spanning the years 1968 to 1990—the last volume, Default, he received only two days before his death. In addition, a selection of poems from a posthumous collection, Spring Foxes, first published in Holland in 2000, is also included. The translator Francis Jones writes, "Hans Faverey left behind a poetic structure of uniquely subtle richness and beauty, made from so little—a few words, surrounded by silence." Filled with a precision and arresting musicality comparable to the hermetic poems of Celan and Bronk, and as mysterious as the writings of Heraclitus and the German mystic Meister Eckhart, Faverey's poems, like Lichtenberg's lightning frozen in time, lash out, splintering systems and syntax—enlightening. ... Read more

Product Description
Revised edition of a Latin American classic in a tour-de-force translation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

the best
if you are a fan of J Borges or O Paz you will be a fan of this Vicente s longest poem. Altazor retains a freshness that is surprising for a work almost 80 years old. As a contempory artist[collage] working in New Zealand I am able to add another tool to help pry open the sleeping eyes of my audiance.

Poetry for People Who Love Avant-Garde Latin American Poetry
Altazor is probably Vicente Huidobro's best poem. Who's Vicente Huidobro you ask? The least known of the top echelon of Latin American avant-garde (or "vanguardista" in Spanish) poets of the 20th century.

Impressive enough in Spanish, with its incredible wordplay and thought-provoking imagery, what's more impressive is Eliot Weinberger's translation. He's the only one who's ever published a translation of the entire thing (everyone else just translates excerpts); this is due to the incredible difficulty of translating some of the complicated linguistic games Huidobro plays with words, which Weinberger actually does a very good job of.

Four star worthy if you can only read the translation; easily five star worthy if you can read both the original and the translation. ... Read more

Product Description
A groundbreaking anthology of classical Chinese translations by giants of Modern American poetry.

A rich compendium of translations, The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry is the first collection to look at Chinese poetry through its enormous influence on American poetry. Weinberger begins with Ezra Pound's Cathay (1915), and includes translations by three other major U.S. poets—William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder—and an important poet-translator-scholar, David Hinton, all of whom have long been associated with New Directions.

Moreover, it is the first general anthology ever to consider the process of translation by presenting different versions of the same poem by various translators, as well as examples of the translators rewriting themselves. The collection, at once playful and instructive, serves as an excellent introduction to the art and tradition of Chinese poetry, gathering some 250 poems by nearly 40 poets. The anthology also includes previously uncollected translations by Pound; a selection of essays on Chinese poetry by all five translators, some never published before in book form; Lu Chi's famous "Rhymeprose on Literature" translated by Achilles Fang; biographical notes that are a collage of poems and comments by both the American translators and the Chinese poets themselves; and also Weinberger's excellent introduction that historically contextualizes the influence Chinese poetry has had on the work of American poets. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Chanting the Splendid Achievements of Forebears
This is a superb anthology several times over. First and foremost, it brings together in one book several centuries of the finest classical poetry from China, starting at the beginning with selections from "The Book of Odes" and drawing a finish line at the end of the Sung Dynasty in 1279. Pretty much all the major poets from the T'ang and Sung are represented here along with earlier masters like T'ao Ch'ien and many interesting lesser-known figures throughout. And in line with New Directions' general attitude that poems should sound like poems, the translations here all flow musically and ring harmoniously in the mind's ear.

Still, there are many other excellent anthologies of Chinese poetry as well. What really distinguishes this one is that all five of the translators are accomplished American poets in their own right. Here we find the eccentric, wildly inaccurate and yet sometimes intuitively ingenious renderings by Ezra Pound, the tersely colloquial if likewise linguistically careless versions by William Carlos Williams, the sensitive and quietly subtle though pretty much reliable verses by Kenneth Rexroth, the deeply spiritual explorations of nature with a counter-cultural edge by Gary Snyder, and finally the translations of David Hinton which alchemically combine poetic sensibility and academic acumen in a proper balance. All in one anthology.

Much more than a mere continuum of accuracy (from less to more) is to be found here, though. Looking only through the somewhat eccentric gaze of these five poet-translators also makes this book something of a history of American literature's long engagement and fascination with the Chinese poetic tradition and, more specifically, of that tradition's influence and impact on modern American poetry itself--a payoff supplemented by the editor's fine introduction discussing this phenomenon in some detail as well as rare, hard-to-find essays by the poets themselves on the subject. Taking this unusual tack also makes this book a study in the undeniably haphazard art of translation itself, for the editor frequently includes different translations of the same poem--seeing how Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder both interpreted and rendered the same original into very different English versions is pretty instructive and enlightening. In one case we are evenshown how Kenneth Rexroth translated the same poems quite differently over time, once in 1956 and again in 1970. Personally I found this to be a fascinating highlight really distinctive if not utterly unique to this anthology.

So whether your primary interest is in Classical Chinese poetry or Modernist American poetry, this anthology is a modern classic in and of itself. And if you happen to be intrigued by how these two traditions interacted and entangled themselves in one of the great cultural interactions of human history, this is an indispensable book for your collection.

Making It New
The rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature kickstarted the Renaissance in Europe. In a similar way, though on a somewhat smaller scale, the conveniently Imagist makeover of Chinese poetry by Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell undoubtedly had a seismic and far-reaching effect on later 20th century American poetry. In his learned Introduction to this outstanding and indispensable Anthology, Weinberger traces the many subsequent debts owed by a galaxy of fine American poets to that seminal work of re-invention. Such impressively talented scholar-translators as Burton Watson, J. P Seaton, Jonathan Chaves and several others receive an honourable mention, though their work is well anthologised elsewhere, and Weinberger's brief seems to have been only to include full-time poets: with the possible exception of Hinton, that is. (However, Sam Hamill's, Arthur Sze's and David Young's names have inexplicably been left out: all three of them marvellous contemporary re-interpreters of the classical Chinese tradition, and all three fine poets in their own right.)

Weinberger concentrates in particular on five exemplary writers: Ezra Pound himself, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and David Hinton. They are certainly all major figures, and it's useful to have them grouped together in this way (particular since the last of them diverges in such interesting ways from the Imagist 'Less is More' tradition: though he certainly 'makes it new' in accordance with that central dictum, which is even quoted in the original Chinese characters both on the cover and on the titlepage).

I thought I already knew quite a lot about American translators from classical Chinese---a whole shelf of mine already groans under their weight---but the William Carlos Williams renderings were entirely new to me, and so were some of the later Pound translations.

For this reader it's hard to contain his excitement at such a beautifully produced edition (only spoiled by a spine-label that's somehow been glued on upside down), and I recommend anyone interested in either recent American poetry or in the classical Chinese tradition to go out and buy it straight away. It will admirably complement Minford and Lau's recent historical anthology of all translations (both European and American, and both scholarly and 'creative'), which of course covers a much broader range, but which is similarly ground-breaking and enthralling to read. ... Read more

Product Description
A beautiful gift edition of Figures& Figurations: the collaborationbetween the Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz and his wife of thirty years, the artist Marie JoséPaz.Figures & Figurations, one of thelast works completed by the great late Mexicanpoet Octavio Paz before his death in 1998, is astunning collaborative project with his wife,the acclaimed artist Marie José Paz. In response to ten of her collage-constructions, he wrote ten new short poems; she in turn created two newartworks in response to two of his earlierpoems. In addition to the gorgeous full-colorart, this bilingual edition features EliotWeinberger's excellent translations, as well as an essay by Octavio Paz on Marie José Paz'swork, "The Whitecaps of Time," in which herelates how her friendship with Joseph Cornellbecame a stimulus for her assemblages and howshe was further spurred on by other friends,such as the linguist Roman Jakobson andElizabeth Bishop. "These objects sometimessurprise us," he writes, "and sometimes make usdream or laugh (humor is one of the poles of her work). Signs that invite us on a motionlessvoyage of fantasy, bridges to the indefinitelysmall or galactic distances, windows that openon a nowhere. Marie José's art is a dialogbetween here and there." An illuminatingafterword by the eminent French poet YvesBonnefoy completes this edition.

... Read more

Product Description
The incomparable Borges delivered these seven lectures in Buenos Aires in 1977; attendees were treated to Borges’ erudition on the following topics: Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Nightmares, Thousand and One Dreams, Buddhism, Poetry, The Kabbalah, and Blindness.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Hello, Mr. Borges
Like most prominent authors of the last century, Jorge Luis Borges made his fair share of speeches.

But "Seven Nights" is no dry collection of stiff monologues. Instead, Borges explores seven different topics over the course of seven intricate, insightfully beautiful speeches. His exquisite prose and conversational style just show us what was obvious all along, that he was a master of the written word.

On the surface, Borges explores seven basic topics -- a careful theological and artistic study of Dante's "Divine Comedy," the nature of nightmares, the origins of "A Thousand and One Nights," the history and qualities of Buddhism, the power of poetry, the Kabbalah (the traditional one, not the Hollywood cult-lite), and finally the question of his own ever-growing blindness.

But Borges isn't just interested in the history and current status of these various topics. He seems a lot more interested in common facets, which intertwine together when these speeches are compiled -- he studies the nature of God, the nature of love, and the power that words -- even everyday ones -- can hold over our minds and souls.

In fact, it's a credit to Borges that he doesn't just ramble on about himself, or the creative writing process. Quite honestly, it would be boring. What's insightful about "Seven Nights" is that these speeches reveal the mind that fuels his otherworldly prose -- we have masks, dreams, classic poetry, legends of Gautama Buddha, and many other things. Seen through these speeches, the world is a magical place.

And he injects a lot of unusual thought into these studies, such as his ruminations that "if Dante had always agreed with the God he imagines [in the Comedy], it would have meant that this was a false god, merely a replica of Dante himself." And he lets his gorgeous prose flow unchecked, such as the horrible, beautiful dream of Wordsworth by the sea -- you'd think it was another of his stories.

If there's a flaw in this slim little volume, it's that the "Nightmares" speech tends to be rather fragmented, with Borges' dreams and accounts breaking into the main narrative.

In fact, he really reveals a great deal about himself over the course of these "seven nights" --his nightmares, his thoughts on his own blindness, his love of words. It tells you a lot about him -- he wasn't a snob, and he was unafraid to homage writers from Plato to Poe, from the nameless storytellers of the Middle-East to G.K. Chesterton.

"Seven Nights" must have been a thrilling experience for those who heard Borges lecture on these topics, and had a little of his magical realism exposed in the real world. Definitely worth checking out.

Thanks to the other reviewers on the Amazon page
Thanks to the other reviewers on the Amazon page for reminding me about the contents of this book. It is one of the many I have read through the years which I do not hold most of in mind, but reminded of recall to a certain degree. ' Seven Nights' impressed me as lesser Borges. The Dante lecture, the lecture on nightmare, the lecture on Kabbalah seemed less essential than Borges words on poetry which too seemed to me only one definition among many .This book of course has those Borges qualities, tremendous learning, capacity to connect between different books and worlds, irony and humor, a certain kind of dignity , the great great love of Literature which inform all of Borges work.
In a way this work leads me to another thought about books. It is that there are writers we love so much that the discovery of an additional even minor work of theirs gives us great pleasure even though it cannot equal their greatest work.
So 'Seven Nights'. And again thanks to other Amazon reviewers who helped me with this review.

Seven Remarkable Lectures Worth Seven Readings
I am fascinated by the genius of Jorge Luis Borges. "Seven Nights" is a short collection (121 pages) of seven lectures given over seven evenings in the summer of 1977 in Buenos Aires. Borges was almost fully blind and spoke informally, without notes, as was his usual style. He exercised his great memory with skill; he shifted effortlessly across literary genre, across the centuries, across languages, occasionally making unexpected connections. I almost believed that I was present at his lectures.

Each lecture can stand alone, but references to prior topics abound.

I first encountered "Seven Nights" some years ago. Having just read Dante's Inferno for the first time, I was having difficulty articulating the powerful impact that Dante's great work had made on me. In his first lecture, "The Divine Comedy", Borges provided the words.

He says, the Middle Ages "gave us, above all, the Divine Comedy, which we continue to read, and which continues to astonish us, which will last beyond our lives, far beyond our waking lives."He describes the joy of reading Dante's work as a narrative, ignoring - at least during the first reading - the extensively documented literary and historical criticism. "The Commedia is a book everyone ought to read. Not to do so is to deprive oneself of the greatest gift that literature can give us."

"Dreams are the genus; nightmares are the species. I will speak first of dreams, and then of nightmares." So begins lecture two. Borges takes us on a journey through history, literature, and poetry in search for understanding of that so common, but so unusual event, that we call dreams.

"A major event in the history of the West was the discovery of the East." And so begins lecture three on that great work that defines the mystery that is Arabia."These tales have had a strange history. They were first told in India, then in Persia, then in Asia Minor, and finally were written down in Arabic and compiled in Cairo. They became The Book of a Thousand and One Nights."

Borges lectures travel an elliptical orbit around his topic, sometimes approaching directly, other times looking outward, away from his stated subject. In his lecture on poetry (number five) he comments on literature in general: "A bibliography is unimportant - after all, Shakespeare knew nothing of Shakespearean criticism. Why not study the texts directly? If you like the book, fine. If you don't, don't read it. The idea of compulsory reading is absurd. Literature is rich enough to offer you some other author worthy of your attention - or one today unworthy of your attention whom you will read tomorrow."

His other lectures, "Buddhism", "The Kabbalah", and "Blindness", are equally intriguing.In once more rereading "Seven Nights" I found myself again astounded by Borges, by his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of literature, by his capability to forge unexpected connections, and by his provocative statements. He has obviously given considerable thought to his conclusions, although Borges is anything but dogmatic. I enjoy a quote from a concluding paragraph in NIghtmares. "We may draw two conclusions, at least tonight; later we can change our minds."

Whether you are familiar with Borges or not, I highly recommend "Seven Nights". Borges is simply without peer, and I do not expect to change my mind later.

Excellent Borges essay collection
The seven nights in question are off the cuff essays Borges delivered in Buenos Aires in the late seventies, written down by fans.He clearly did this sort of thing very well, and the regret one has at not being able to appreciate the performance at first hand is vitiated by these excellent transcriptions.Dante, the Thousand and One nights, Buddhism - all dealt with in exquisite thoughtful prose.All quotations are from memory (Borges was by now completely blind) and all conclusions paradoxical, lapidary, Borgesian.A stocking filler.Go ahead, treat yourself.

Nuevas noches argentinas
Estas conferencias que Borges pronunció a lo largo de siete noches diferentes -¿o idénticas?- son una muestra acabada de su maestría verbal.
Quienes hemos leído estas deliciosas apreciaciones borgeanas volvemos a ellas cada noche que necesitamos regocijar nuestro éspiritu. (Entonces, es como comer con champagne) ... Read more

Product Description
“Michael Davidson has done a masterful job of editing this new edition of the Collected Poems.... Few poets significantly alter and enhance the state of the art. Oppen is one of them.”—Michael Palmer, BookforumGeorge Oppen’s New Collected Poems gathers in one volume all of the poet’s books published in his lifetime (1908–84), as well as his previously uncollected poems and a selection of his unpublished work. Oppen, whose writing was championed by Ezra Pound when it was first published by The Objectivist Press in the 1930s, has become one of America’s most admired poets. In 1969 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his collection Of Being Numerous, which The New Yorker recently said is “unmatched by any book of American poetry since.” The New Collected Poems is edited by Michael Davidson of the University of California at San Diego, who also writes an introduction about the poet’s life and work and supplies generous notes that will give interested readers an understanding of the background of the individual books as well as keys to references in the poems. The award-winning essayist and translator Eliot Weinberger offers a personal remembrance of the poet in his preface, “Oppen Then.” This newly revised paperback edition also includes a generous CD of the poet reading from each of his poetry collections. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A voice in print and audio
In this re-edited version of Oppen's 1975 Collected Poems, editor Michael Davidson adds 60 previously unpublished poems, most from the 1950s through the 1970s.

The previously unpublished poems come from Oppen's manuscripts and working papers. Davidson says that, although this edition may include a bit more of the unpolished material than Oppen would have liked, he justifies these inclusions by considering the way Oppen composed; his "tendency to embed poems in the midst of a kind of textual rubble."

So we benefit from Davidson's archaeological digs. He worked to respect the integrity of Oppen's compositional standards by including "poems that he worked on over a period of time, or which elucidate other published poems." Sixty pages of notes provide additional substance and texture to this edition.
In these readings recorded in San Francisco, New York, and London, one hears a voice that is disillusioned, perhaps tired, but committed to grappling with personal and collective experience through art. In fact, Davidson says his editorial decisions were inspired in part by Oppen's remark that poems are forged out of social and familial forces beyond the aesthetic: He was shaped by working as a manual laborer, raising a family, the Depression, the threat of Fascism, and Communist Party activism.

Objectivist Poems For Further Reading
George Oppen's New Collected Poems is an updated version of Oppens' 1979 Collected Poems.The Pulitzer Prize poet takes the reader through a journey of his life.The poems have a distinct trait, which are based on Oppen's treaded and somewhat nomadic life that he lived along with his wife, Mary.The Introduction of the book offers tidbits of an adventurous and well-travelled man as well as his controversial political leanings with communism and anti-fascism.Despite that fact, Oppen wrote each poem with a sense of time and place, and one may easily identify where he was geographically, New York, Mexico, or California and what he was writing about.In essence, he writes with the world in mind and its many intricacies.

The most distinctive aspect of his poems is his reference to the war experience.As a veteran of World War II, Oppen reflects on the lasting affect the theatre of war had on him as well as the fury of the Cold War during the 1950s. He displays this in poems that are included in The Materials collection.In addition, Oppen offers a storm of socially political poems which may be the capstone of New Collected Poems.Oppen's 40 section, 1969 prize winning book, Of Being Numerous, provides his voice of opposition to the war in Vietnam; the illustrious distinction for his work allowed wider audience to become exposed it. This collection also includes Oppen's last published book, Primitive and unpublished poems.The last portion of the book provides a run down and analysis of each collection.

New Collected Poems offers much to be discussed.However, for every reader that obtains a copy, there will always be a different perspectives to Oppen's work even if you aren't a poetic theorist.Michael Davidson states: "They are often abstract, as mysterious as koans, a sea-surge of contradictory forces:assertions and their negations, declarations couched in double negatives, questions without answers, straightforward observations placed next to gnomic statements whose beauty lingers forever because they are never fully understood" (preface, x).If that may be a handful, this collection of poems may nurture your mind toward other poems and poets.

Nevertheless, Oppen does a find job of meshing together history and literature in his poems, which was an added plus for this reader.

The Clarity of Compassion
This volume constitutes the most complete collection of Oppen's work to date-- many poems of which have not been anthologized until now.The centerpiece of the collection is Oppen's wonderful book-length poem-- Of Being Numerous.This Pulitzer-prize-winning poem is concerned with the dilemma of seeing the world through the eyes of solitude versus seeing the world through the eyes of what it is to be of the numerous.Throughout the poem's forty sections the reader is introduced to the meaning of what it is to be "of being numerous," warned about the shipwreck of isolation, thrust into the madness of war with all of its atrocities, reminded of the limits of language, introduced to clarity, and finally called upon to realize the necessity for compassion.A heartily recommended read! ... Read more

Product Description
A pocket-sized Pearls edition of some of Borges’ best fictions and essays.Everything and Nothing collects the best of Borges’ highly influential work—written in the 1930s and ‘40s—that foresaw the internet (“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”), quantum mechanics (“The Garden of Forking Paths”), and cloning (“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”). David Foster Wallace described Borges as  “scalp-crinkling . . . Borges’ work is designed primarily as metaphysical arguments...to transcend individual consciousness.” ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A superb selection of the Borges who was and is
This work contains a number of Borges' most- well known 'ficciones'. 'Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote' starts off with a catalogue of the surviving known writings of this 'fictive' author. It then describes his great project the rewriting or writing anew of 'Don Quixote' and his completion of chapters nine, and thirty- eight, and partial completion of chapter twenty- two. It goes on to explore the meaning and implication of a writing which word- by- word is identical with the original and yet reads differently.
The other stories are also among Borges' most well- known. 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' 'The Lottery in Babylon' 'The Garden of Forking Paths' 'Death and the Compass'.
Among the non- fiction works are 'Kafka and his Precursors' the now legendary 'Borges and I' ' Everything and Nothing' ' Nightmares' and 'Blindness'.
Borges games with Identity and Time are played here in the most masterful way. His depiction of the elusiveness and non- apprehendable reality of the private self is complemented by his celebration of the communal cooperative creation which is Literary Tradition.
This does not mean the work is not moving on a private confessional level. For however metaphysical it may seem Borges and I tells us much about the man himself, coffee- drinker, map- reader and student of Stevenson and Kipling. The concluding essay is of course a most moving one, as it is impossible not to be touched by the voice of 'sightlost creators who heroically persist in creating literature for the world- Homer, Milton and Borges who God 'provides day- labor for, light denied.'
The mystery and joy of great Literature is in these pages.
Read and delight.

100th anniversary of Borges' birth
The introduction to this celebratory volume "shocked" me - Borges was first published in English in 1962.Within five years, a farm kid like myself was familiar with him.Obviously, he work immediately was recognized as exceptional, out of the ordinary ...This slim volume provides an enjoyable reminder of his other works or a great introduction to the themes and style of Borges.

The volume begins with a handful of stories - the rewriting of Don Quixote, the imagined world, life as chance, spies and detectives.All of which explore language, imagination, reality, labyrinth ... In all, Borges displays a broad education, mingling literature, psychology, philosophy, philology, the occult in a manner both entertaining and provocative.

The stories are followed by essays - a meditation on the Great Wall of China and the destruction of history, a consideration of precursors to Kafka with provocative ideas of how Kafka affects our reading of his precursors, Shakespeare and self-identity, Borges and self-identity.In reading these, one is reminded how thin the line between essay and fiction is in the work of Borges.

Finally, the book closes with transcriptions of two speeches - one on dreams and nightmares, the other on blindness and the poet.

This wonderful selection provides a representative and varied introduction to Borges that is not to be missed.The translations are excellent, the writing superb.

the stone and the shell
This beautiful little book contains just a few of Borges' best works from his 1944 work Ficciones (also widely available in the 1964 collection of English translations entitled Labyrinths).

It also includes important later works of Borges, Nightmares and Blindness (transcriptions of two lectures from 1977).

His own worst nightmare involves discovering the King of Norway, with his sword and his dog, sitting at the foot of Borges' bed. "Retold, my dream is nothing; dreamt, it was terrible." Such is the power of describing, of reading this father of modern literature.

In Blindness, he examines his own loss of sight in the context of examining poetry itself. In a story right out of, well, Borges, he discusses his appointment as Director of a library at the very time he has lost his reading sight. (Two other Directors are also blind.)

"No one should read self-pity or reproach
into this statement of the majesty
of God; who with such splendid irony
granted me books and blindness at one touch."

This lecture is a moving (and brief, just 15 pages) ode to poetry . If one wants ironic context, just consider that these lectures on Nightmares and Blindness were delivered in Buenos Aires at the height of the State of Siege of the Argentine Generals.

...

A Finely Pointed Look at Borges
It seems alternately true and false that Jorge Luis Borges lives inside each of his writings in a completely symbiotic or photosynthetic way, feeding off his own product until the man and his work areindistinguishable; the man never seemed to be able to detach himself fromhis story and simply write, and yet at times his expected voicingdisappears and one might believe another author has usurped Borges' pen tocomplete another metaphysic tale.Borges wore many masks, and that fact isacknowledged by the man himself here, in the tiny, fascinating "Borgesand I," in which Stevenson is both invoked and mentioned, crafting aJekyll-and-Hydean bit of self-awareness with the unmistakable tango twistof Borges' playful Argentinian idiom.Everything and Nothing is a samplerof Borges' finest work from his fiction and nonfiction batteries, which arealmost indistinguishable.They overflow with Borges' fascination withlogic, labyrinths, language, and the relation between the three (for a finenonfiction work in this vein, read Poundstone's Labyrinth of Reason) andhow they figure in philosophy and metaphysics.For a more whole view ofBorges, try the new large collections of his work, but for a tiny glance atthe genius of this literary superstar, Everything and Nothing is perfect.

The riddle of multiplicity and personal identity
The indefinability of the self and the multiplicity of personal identity are the main lines of thought connecting these 11 pieces of excellent literature, among the finest of Borges's. An author of short fictionstories, essayist and poet -though perhaps too much of a thinker forpoetry-, Borges is, without hesitation, one of the greatest writers of alltime. This careful, well-thought selection gives a brilliant account of oneof Borges's conspicuous, recurrent themes: the difficulty of definingself-identity, since a man's distinctive features, whether mental, physicalor even metaphysical, are not unique to him. As in some of the most notedmasterpieces of literature, the philosophical substrate provides thebackground for fascinating and intriguing stories, frequently trespassingthe fantastic or the bizarre. So, we witness the struggle of an early 20thCentury French novelist to write The Quixote -not a contemporary version ofCervantes's renowned work, but the original -- and succeeding! We have theoccasion to come to terms with the strange world of Tlön and its uncannyunderstanding of reality, as shown by its diverse, odd languages. TheLottery of Babylon gives every man the opportunity to become rich, powerfuland exultant...or appallingly miserable and abject -by chance? The Garden ofForking Paths is a legacy of innumerable futures -which, however, does notinclude all of them. Death and the Compass displays the confrontation of adetective with his murderer, whom he is chasing, in a labyrinth of cluesspread throughout space and time. The brief historical and literaryessays concerning the elusive and somewhat contradictory character of theEmperor of China, builder of the Great Wall and destructor of books, andthe precursors of Kafka, paving the way for something they ignore and beinglater re-created, explore the indefinability of man's essence, in much thesame way as the previous fiction stories, since one never knows quite whatare the limits between fiction and fact, both inside and out of Borges'swork. Borges and I and Everything and Nothing -the latter is theoriginal title by the author in English, though the work was written, asthe rest of the compilation, in Spanish- express succinctly the coreargument of the book, raising an uneasy metaphysical question: Whereas manmay not know exactly who he is, does God know? Finally, twoconferences given by Borges close the volume, turning to episodes fromBorges's own life, in order to resume somehow the book's contents byinvoking the fantastic worlds of dreams -rather, of nightmares- and ofblindness, that suggest a vaster and more weird reality with perhapsblurrier limits than we can possibly understand. However, there is spacefor man if we are able to accept what we cannot understand, as a startingpoint for creating our own-made life. ... Read more

Product Description
Paz's great poem, tr Eliot Weinberger, bilingual ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Sunstone: Life of A Crystalline Muse
What if God were the world, the stars, lust, sex, trees, rivers, water, salt, and crystal? What if the world were the poet's fecund Mexican lover? To Octavio Paz, Mexican poet and Nobel laureate, God, the totality, is all of this, and more. To Paz, the reality of daily life is - on the descriptive surface - quite surreal, very vibratory, illusory and refelective. Things sparkle and song is everywhere. To even comment on this vibrational reality is a stop-start, humbling obsession for the poet. This poem is a much needed break for those too bored with European views of reality. This book opens doors to Mexican poetry and to Paz' great career as a poet and essayist. Be prepared to be changed.

Michael James Hawk
http://www.sculpture.org/portfolio/sculptorPage.php?sculptor_id=1001229

Este es un poema necesario.
Paz ha creado una joya de incalculable valor. Con toda la plasticidad que un genio puede brindarle a un texto, San Octavio recorre en Piedra de Sol todos los grandes temas de la poesía y con ello, del hombre. Es tan naturalel desempeño de sus letras que es necesario hacer un esfuerzo para asimilarque nos han llevado de un confín a otro, de la magia a la realidad, de lamujer a la soledad, del río al dolor. Gracias a la serenidad del texto laforma (son 584 endecasílabos) no se percibe en la lectura: así emergen losgigantes. ... Read more

Product Description
While Mitch Epstein is widely acknowledged as one of the world's most distinguished art photographers, a complete survey of his work has never been published until now. Mitch Epstein: Work invites readers to trace the evolution of Epstein's entire career, following formal and thematic concerns that reveal how his aesthetics, his techniques and his politics have shifted and influenced one another over time. His early work on recreation is given its most natural yet unexpected configuration: Images from the United States are mixed with those from other parts of the world. Each of his major projects cover Common Practice (1973-1989), Vietnam (1992-1995), The City (1995-1998), Family Business (2000-2003), and the current, ongoing American Power. The beginning of each chapter includes a short essay by the artist or an excerpt from his previously published writings. An afterword by Eliot Weinberger and a DVD of Epstein's film Dad round out the package. Many of the pictures here have never before been exhibited or published. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Greatest Hits
This is a greatest hits book of Mitch Epstein's work up to (but not including work from his new book) Power. It's well prints and there are a small selection of images from a variety of series over the years. The one drawback here is that the size is somewhat small. If you are at all interested in his landmark work "Recreation" be sure to pick up that book because it is presented in a large, horizontal format which really shows off the photos. This book is vertical so those horizontal images in Recreation are much smaller here. Otherwise this is a fine 'best of' collection for a reasonable price.

Great transaction
Great to deal with.Would have recieved product as scheduled if DHL did'nt lose it for a couple of days during shipping, but this was not the sellers fault.

very good
If you have a love for photography and a decent understanding of how composition works I would recommend this book as a great addition to your home library. the book takes you on a very personal tour of a photographer's experience as any good photography book should. The photography and print quality of the book made it a very good purchase and the writing was equally as sharp as the photos.
A great gift for anyone who is a seasoned veteran photographer or a rookie photographer, this book will help their love of photography to flourish. ... Read more