Selected Prose and Prose-Poems

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The first Latin American to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature, the Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral is often characterized as a healing, maternal voice who spoke on behalf of women, indigenous peoples, the disenfranchised, children, and the rural poor. She is that political poet and more: a poet of philosophical meditation, self-consciousness, and daring. This is a book full of surprises and paradoxes. The complexity and structural boldness of these prose-poems, especially the female-erotic prose pieces of her first book, make them an important moment in the history of literary modernism in a tradition that runs from Baudelaire, the North American moderns, and the South American postmodernistas. It's a book that will be eye-opening and informative to the general reader as well as to students of gender studies, cultural studies, literary history, and poetry.

This Spanish-English bilingual volume gathers the most famous and representative prose writings of Gabriela Mistral, which have not been as readily available to English-only readers as her poetry. The pieces are grouped into four sections. "Fables, Elegies, and Things of the Earth" includes fifteen of Mistral's most accessible prose-poems. "Prose and Prose-Poems from Desolacion / Desolation [1922]" presents all the prose from Mistral's first important book. "Lyrical Biographies" are Mistral's poetic meditations on Saint Francis and Sor Juana de la Cruz. "Literary Essays, Journalism, 'Messages'" collects pieces that reveal Mistral's opinions on a wide range of subjects, including the practice of teaching; the writers Alfonso Reyes, Alfonsina Storni, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Pablo Neruda; Mistral's own writing practices; and her social beliefs. Editor/translator Stephen Tapscott rounds out the volume with a chronology of Mistral's life and a brief introduction to her career and prose."

Language: English

Pages: 262

Format: Paperback

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Release: September 01, 2004

ISBN: 0292752660

ISBN 13: 9780292752665

Selected Prose and Prose-Poems

Stephen Tapscott

3.6/5 ( ratings)

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Language: English

Pages: 262

Format: Paperback

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Release: September 01, 2004

ISBN: 0292752660

ISBN 13: 9780292752665

More books from Stephen Tapscott

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Reader Reviews

Edita

(4/5)

19

Jul 18, 2025

The sand. The sand that has lost our footsteps, even those we didn’t want to lose. Where are my happy steps? And the slow ones, and the fast ones, where? Because sometimes I wanted to gather all my footsteps from the four points of the compass, to stand in the middle among them so that they would dance around me, now that I’m like the broken axle of a wheel. The sand has lost my footprints; it doesn’t remember any of them and can’t return them to me.
Lauren

(5/5)

4

Jul 18, 2025

"While you burned, my memories or my dreams began to kindle, and as coals slow down, they'd begin to dim, and then to die down...Intimacy is what you are: without you the house exists, but it didn't feel like home.".'El Brasero' / The Hearth from 'Poemas del hogar' / Poems of the Home from SELECTED PROSE and Prose-Poems by Gabriela Mistral, translated from the Spanish by Stephen Tapscott / 2002 by University of Texas PressThis was my introduction to "Gabriela", (one of) the pre-eminent poets of
Stephen

(5/5)

2

Jul 18, 2025

Stunning -- just don't read it in English!
Tim

(4/5)

1

Jul 18, 2025

Here's my review on Belletrista: [return][return]http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue...
h

(3/5)

2

Jul 18, 2025

i've been wanting to check out mistral for a long time. she writes beautifully about women's experiences. her religious writing i find more opaque, difficult to get into as someone who is outside the church. the translation here seems to be good, but it was difficult to make comparisons because the publisher did not set the book up as facing-page.
Cat Fithian

(4/5)

1

Jul 18, 2025

Beautiful poems from this Chilean poet. I particularly liked her poems on child-bearing. Poignant, earthy and ethereal, simultaneously.

Edita

(4/5)

Jul 18, 2025

The sand. The sand that has lost our footsteps, even those we didn’t want to lose. Where are my happy steps? And the slow ones, and the fast ones, where? Because sometimes I wanted to gather all my footsteps from the four points of the compass, to stand in the middle among them so that they would dance around me, now that I’m like the broken axle of a wheel. The sand has lost my footprints; it doesn’t remember any of them and can’t return them to me.

Lauren

(5/5)

"While you burned, my memories or my dreams began to kindle, and as coals slow down, they'd begin to dim, and then to die down...Intimacy is what you are: without you the house exists, but it didn't feel like home.".'El Brasero' / The Hearth from 'Poemas del hogar' / Poems of the Home from SELECTED PROSE and Prose-Poems by Gabriela Mistral, translated from the Spanish by Stephen Tapscott / 2002 by University of Texas PressThis was my introduction to "Gabriela", (one of) the pre-eminent poets of

Stephen

Stunning -- just don't read it in English!

Tim

Here's my review on Belletrista: [return][return]http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue...

(3/5)

i've been wanting to check out mistral for a long time. she writes beautifully about women's experiences. her religious writing i find more opaque, difficult to get into as someone who is outside the church. the translation here seems to be good, but it was difficult to make comparisons because the publisher did not set the book up as facing-page.

Cat Fithian

Beautiful poems from this Chilean poet. I particularly liked her poems on child-bearing. Poignant, earthy and ethereal, simultaneously.

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Selected Prose and Prose-Poems

Selected Prose and Prose-Poems

Selected Prose and Prose-Poems

More books from Stephen Tapscott

100 Love Sonnets

Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology

Reader Reviews