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The Spring that Feeds the Torrent

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Original price $14.00
Original price $14.00 - Original price $14.00
Original price $14.00
Current price $9.95
$9.95 - $9.95
Current price $9.95
Publisher: Wiseblood Books
Publication Date:
Format: Paperpack
Pages: 106
Availability: In Stock
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Poems by Saint John of the Cross

Regarded by many as one of the finest Spanish poets, the 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross wrote sublime poems that chronicle the soul's purificatory pilgrimage through the dark night of the soul to the joy of mystical union with the Creator. To translate such works, with their passionate, intimate intensity, requires both boldness and delicacy.

The translator of poetry faces many challenges. As the late poet Timothy Murphy notes in his introduction, she must adhere "not just to beauty but to truth." In these masterful renderings, Rhina P. Espaillat proves her prowess as both poet and translator. Espaillat has lived with these poems since she was a child, having heard them recited by her father. Her deep and loving connection to the sound and substance of these works has brought forth verses-exquisite in their own right-that transmit both the truth and the beauty of St. John's original.

Editorial Reviews

“The poems of St. John of the Cross draw spirit and flesh together, pursuing their grand analogy in which divine love and human love mirror one another, expressing mystical insights in outpourings of language where the exalted and the humble are equally at home. Among translators who have struggled to capture this quality of resolved paradox, Rhina P. Espaillat is in the first rank. Her English versions are keenly attentive to the formal intricacies of the originals, and her stylistic choices are never quaintly antique nor jarringly contemporary. The language here is simply timeless, graceful in movement, imbued with the seraphic naturalness with which St. John was gifted. This volume is a remarkable cultural achievement; undoubtedly, as the translator herself has written, it is from first to last a labor of love.”
—ROBERT B. SHAW, Emily Dickinson Professor of English Emeritus, Mount Holyoke College

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