The origin of species and other poems by Ernesto Cardenal and translated by John Lyons

This is poetry from Nicaragua.

The origin of species and other poems by Ernesto Cardenal translated by John Lyons is published by Texas Tech University Press. This is a Book originally written in Spanish. This was published in 2011.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780896726895E12.

Ernesto Cardenal’s The origin of species and other poems, translated by John Lyons, brings together the Nicaraguan poet’s habit of thinking on a cosmic, political, and spiritual scale. Cardenal is rarely merely private. His poems often feel drawn toward the largest available structures: evolution, revolution, prayer, empire, ecology, and time. The title poem’s Darwinian echo suggests a book interested in creation without simplicity. I would read this as a collection where science and theology do not cancel each other out, but argue inside the same lyric field. Lyons’s translation offers English-language readers a route into Cardenal’s expansive imagination, where the poem can become sermon, documentary, love song, and cosmology at once. Its scale is part of its strange generosity.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.