Volume 21, Number 8 · May 16, 1974
Dazzling and Dizzying
By Michael Wood
Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde
by Octavio Paz
Harvard University Press, 186 pp., $7.95
Conjunctions and Disjunctions
by Octavio Paz, translated by Helen R. Lane
Viking, 148 pp., $7.95
The Bow and the Lyre
by Octavio Paz, translated by Ruth L.C. Simms
University of Texas Press, 281 pp., $8.50
Early Poems 1935-1955
by Octavio Paz, translated by Muriel Rukeyser. others
New Directions, 145 pp., $2.50 (paper)
Playful and pompous by turns, cosmopolitan, provincial, lucid, hazy, brave, evasive, Octavio Paz is the Platonic idea of a Latin American intellectual; and not the least of his achievements is to fill with charm and distinction and irony that difficult and wearying role. For the intellectual in Latin America is critic, clown, priest, radical agitator, and Victorian school-master all at once—a man for far too many seasons. He must evaluate the past, scoff at the present, bless new movements in literature and art, discreetly encourage the right kind of revolution, and compose ritual letters of recommendation for his country and countrymen. Among other things. What is surprising about Paz is not that he should have written a certain amount of nonsense in recent years but that he should have done nothing worse than write nonsense; and better still, that he should have written a great deal of poetry that is far from being nonsense.
Review, 3610 words
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