Fevor de Buenos Aires Summary

Jorge Luis Borges, one of the leading writers of the twentieth century in any language, wrote in Spanish. He published his first volume of poetry, Fevor de Buenos Aires, when he twenty-four, a decade before he began publishing the fiction that would make him famous in the United States. In Selected Poems, thirteen translators present almost two hundred poems Borges wrote from his first volume in 1923 to his last one, published in 1985, the year before his death. Several tropes that would become hallmarks of the author's poetry appear in this first book. In "The Streets," he extols the streets of Buenos Aires, but not the crowded ones. Instead, he concentrates on quiet, neighborhood streets filled with austere little houses. In "Recoleta Cemetery," Borges ponders the incomprehensible miracle that life ends. "The South" is the first of numerous...