The University of Wisconsin Press

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Poetry / Latin American Literature

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Sor Juana's Love Poems Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Translated by Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique Love poems by one of the world's most daring erotic writers These exquisite love poems, some of them clearly addressed to women, were written by the visionary and passionate genius of Mexican letters, the seventeenth-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In this volume they are translated into the idiom of our own time by poets Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique. Some of them are rooted in Renaissance courtly conventions; others are startlingly ahead of their time, seemingly modern in the naked power of the complex sexual feelings they address. “Love opened a mortal wound. In agony, I worked the blade to make it deeper. Please, I begged, let death come quick. Wild, distracted, sick, I counted, counted all the ways love hurt me. One life, I thought— a thousand deaths. Blow after blow, my heart couldn't survive this beating. Then—how can I explain it?— I came to my senses. I said, Why do I suffer? What lover ever had so much pleasure” —Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Joan Larkin has published the poetry collections Housework, A Long Sound, and Cold River. The editor of numerous anthologies, she is the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards for Poetry. She teaches poetry writing at Sarah Lawrence and New England Colleges. Jaime Manrique is the author of the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, the novels Latin Moon in Manhattan and Colombian Gold, and two poetry collections, My Night with Federico García Lorca and Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus. He is cotranslator, with Joan Larkin, of Sor Juana's Love Poems.He lives in New York City and is an associate professor in the MFA program at Columbia University. Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)

March 2003 LC: 2002075669 PQ 88 pp.   6 x 9 1 woodcut and decorative vignettes throughout Paper $12.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-18704-0 ADD TO CART   1997 paperback, Painted Leaf

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