Poesia inglesa contemporanea: antologia bilingue, versiones, seleccion y prologo de Antonio Cisneros, Barral, Barcelona.
Seis poetas de lengua inglesa, presentados y traducidos por Isabel Fraire, Sep/Setentas, Mexico D. F.

Spanish writers have long watched closely the prose developments in English literature. Now, however, new poets are finding their way from Slough to Lima, from Idaho to Guadalajara. The best Spanish language poets have always attended closely to developments in American poetry, but a wider audience may be developing. Pound's Cantos have been translated in full now. And not only the great moderns are taking the lawless road. Latin American and Spanish audiences are being subjected to the same translation fall-out that we have experienced in England in the last fifteen years. A maze of work is now available from various languages. As in England, it is a maze without a plan. There are excellent translations and positive travesties. Ideology is often the translator. Writers are wrenched into Spanish because their content is thought to be relevant. The poetry is lost in translation; and so too is all but the translator's wilful vision of his subject.

The two anthologies that have reached me recently have different objectives but both address the same 'mass audience'. Both are inexpensive paperbacks, both have certain pretensions, both have sound objectives. One is almost a classic of poetic betrayal, misrepresentation and simple linguistic naivety. The other is almost a classic of lucid, sensitive presentation and linguistic skill. In the mirror that Antonio ...