[Borges] reveals more of himself in his verse than in any other kind of writing. The capriciousness, the learned frivolity and playfulness of much of his prose are rarely found in his poetry. By contrast we see in it the other Borges—the sincere and ardent youth of the 1920's or the contemplative and nostalgic writer of the 1950's and 1960's. For many this is an unknown Borges: perhaps it is the real Borges. (p. 27)

At first glance the forty-five short pieces of free verse in Borges' first collection [Fervor de Buenos Aires] seem to be little more than a group of vignettes describing familiar scenes in and around his native city. However, to say that Fervor de Buenos Aires is a group of poems describing the city of Buenos Aires, would be equivalent to saying that Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem about a bird...