"The growth of the work of Octavio Paz," writes Muriel Rukeyser in her preface to this bilingual selection of the Mexican poet's Early Poems, "has made clear to an audience in many languages what was evident from the beginning ... he is a great poet, a world-poet whom we need. The poems here speak--as does all his work since--deeply, erotically, with grave and passionate involvement." In this, a much revised edition of the earlier Selected Poems (Indiana University Press, 1963), Miss Rukeyser has joined to her own translations those of Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp, Denise Levertov, and William Carlos Williams, while many of the readings embody Paz's own revisions of the original texts. The poems were chosen from eight separate collections, among them Condición de nube ("Phase of Cloud"), Semillas para un himno ("Seeds for a Psalm"), Piedras sueltas ("Riprap"), and Estación violenta ("Violent Season").

A collection of poems by Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz, presented in Spanish and in English.

Octavio Paz, 1990 Nobel Prize winner, declares that his many nonfiction books on the subject of India are only footnotes to his India poems. Those collected here cover more than 40 years of Paz's many and various commitments to Indiaas Mexican ambassador, student of Indian philosophy, and, above all, poet. "Paz's poetry is a seismograph of our century's turbulence, a crossroads where East meets West".PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Octavio Paz, the 1990 Nobel Laureate, has won distinction as an anthropologist, philosopher and critic of art and literature. But it is as a poet that he is most celebrated. Configurations was his first major collection to be published in this country, and includes in their entirety Sun Stone (1957) and Blanco (1967). Paz himself translated many of the poems from the Spanish. Some distinguished contributors to this bilingual edition include, among others, Paul Blackburn, Lysander Kemp, Denise Levertov, and Muriel Rukeyser.