This volume contains nearly all the criticism that Alexander Coleman wrote for The New Criterion between 1994 and 2003. A specialist in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American literature, Coleman was also a superb essayist on music, and his wide erudition, as revealed in these writings, demonstrates an easy mastery of the entire modernist tradition. Diversions and Animadversions is divided into three parts. The first contains Coleman's literary essays including a lengthy piece on Eba de Quieros, the great master of Portuguese realism, and shorter pieces on the Argentinian writer and Borges disciple, Adolfo Bioy Casares, as well as a review of the most recent translation of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. Coleman's greatest passion, however, was for music, and part two contains essays, concert and book reviews, and reports on the cultural situation of music. Among the subjects examined here are the operas of Schoenberg, Berg, Richard Strauss, the recently published letters of Toscanini, the music criticism of Virgil Thomson, the fluctuating critical reputation of Jean Sibelius, and the "authentic" performance practice movement, along with considerations of such instrumentalists as Sviatoslav Richter and Alicia de Larrocha. The book concludes with Coleman's travel writings, which are both evocative mood pieces and incisive social and political commentary. Graced with personal appreciations by Roger Kimball and Denis Donoghue, this volume encapsulates the work of a writer of rare wit, capacious learning, and eager, if gently ironical, curiosity.

This volume contains nearly all the criticism that Alexander Coleman wrote for "The New Criterion" between 1994 and 2003. A specialist in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American literature, Coleman was also a superb essayist on music, and his wide erudition, as revealed in these writings, demonstrates an easy mastery of the entire modernist tradition. "Diversions and Animadversions" is divided into three parts. The first contains Coleman's literary essays including a lengthy piece on Ea de Quieros, the great master of Portuguese realism, and shorter pieces on the Argentinian writer and Borges disciple, Adolfo Bioy Casares, as well as a review of the most recent translation of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. Coleman's greatest passion, however, was for music, and part two contains essays, concert and book reviews, and reports on the cultural situation of music. Among the subjects examined here are the operas of Schoenberg, Berg, Richard Strauss, the recently published letters of Toscanini, the music criticism of Virgil Thomson, the fluctuating critical reputation of Jean Sibelius, and the "authentic" performance practice movement, along with considerations of such instrumentalists as Sviatoslav Richter and Alicia de Larrocha. The book concludes with Coleman's travel writings, which are both evocative mood pieces and incisive social and political commentary. Graced with personal appreciations by Roger Kimball and Denis Donoghue, this volume encapsulates the work of a writer of rare wit, capacious learning, and eager, if gently ironical, curiosity. "Alexander Coleman" taught Spanish literature at New York University. He was the author of "Ea de Quieros and European Realism. Roger Kimball" is managing editor of "The New Criterion." His books include "The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America. Denis Donoghue" is Henry James Chair of English and American Letters at New York University. His recent books include "Words Alone: The Poet T.S. Eliot."

Universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself to be first and foremost a poet. This collection of his poetry, the largest ever to be assembled in English (alongside the original Spanish), includes scores of pieces that have never previously been translated.

Selected from a lifetime's work, the poems explore themes that preoccupied Borges: the enigma of Time and history;
the metaphysics of Schopenhauer and Berkeley;
the cult of his ancestors and his 'mysterious habit called Buenos Aires';
and the imagery of mirrors,
mazes and swords.
The brilliance of the original Spanish is in each case matched by luminous English versions by an impressive array of translators:

Willis Barnstone •
Alexander Coleman •
Robert S. Fitzgerald •
Stephen Kessler •
Kenneth Krabbenhoft •
Eric McHenry •
W. S. Merwin •
Alastair Reid •
Hoyt Rogers •
Mark Strand •
Charles Tomlinson •
Alan S. Trueblood •
John Updike

The autobiography of Cuba's finest poet, whose condemnation by the Castro regime became a cause celebre.

Coleman begins his book with the following supposition: that Luis Cernuda was a poet whose primary impulse in his art was the suppression of the subjective and the consequent objectivization of poetry. Through careful reading of Luis Cernuda's later poetry, written after 1936, Alexander Coleman argues that Luis Cernuda was a poet whose primary impulse in his art was the suppression of the subjective and the consequent objectivization of poetry.