Songs of Life and Hope/Cantos de vida y esperanza

From Booklist

Born in Nicaragua, considered a key player in the Spanish modernist movement, and acknowledged as an influence on many Hispanic poets, Dario has nonetheless been rarely translated into English. This bilingual collection surely will fill an overdue gap in Hispanic literature. Beyond that, Dario's work is multifaceted and thought provoking. It should appeal to those who admire Lorca, Vallejo, and Neruda, although Dario's style is a bit less lyrical, at least in translation. Many poems in the book praise and criticize artists, biblical figures, mythic creatures, literary characters, presidents, and kings. Themes include bearing witness to pain with the hope for transcendence, strong spirituality tied to a pagan connection to nature, and underneath, a Christian sensibility, a mythological sense of good versus evil, and a metaphorical view. Translators Derusha and Acerda have clearly worked hard to present the real Dario, an innovative writer worthy of further examination. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Rubén Darío is one of the world’s most splendid poets and one of the least known, partly because his revolutionary and hybrid style is almost untranslatable. Delighted readers will finally have a chance to plunge into the great Nicaraguan poet’s masterpiece and sing with him of life and hope.”—Ariel Dorfman, author of In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages