Piedra de Sol = Sunstone

by Octavio Paz

Book Overview

Presented in Eliot Weinberger's excellent new translation with the Spanish texts en face, this is the 1957 poem "that definitively established Paz as a major international figure" (Sagetrieb). Written as a single cyclical sentence (at the end of the poem the first six lines are written again), Sunstone is a tour de force of momentum. It takes as its structural basis the circular Aztec calendar, which measured the synodic period of the planet Venus...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811211959
• ISBN13: 9780811211956
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 60 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

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 natural el desempeño de sus letras que es necesario hacer un esfuerzo para asimilar que nos han llevado de un confín a otro, de la magia a la realidad, de la mujer a la soledad, del río al dolor. Gracias a la serenidad del texto la forma (son 584 endecasílabos) no se percibe en la lectura: así emergen los gigantes.