Lihn was without a doubt the best poet of his generation, the so-called Generación del 50, and one of the three or four best poets born between 1925 and 1935. Or maybe one of the two best . . . To engage with his poetry is to confront a voice that questions everything. That voice, however, does not come from hell, nor from millenarian prophecies, nor even from a prophesying ego. Rather, it is the voice of an enlightened citizen, a citizen who hopes to reach modernity or who is resignedly modern.
— Roberto Bolaño
A collection of lyrical, philosophical early poems by “one of Chile’s foremost poets” (Publishers Weekly)
Enrique Lihn is among the most important Chilean poets, alongside Nicanor Parra, since the generation of Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, and Pablo Neruda. Lihn’s first two poetry books represented here—Nada se escurre (Nothing Slips Away), 1949, and Poemas de este tiempo y de otro, (Poems of This Time and Another), 1955—introduce his dark, lyric genius and existential intensity. These works sounded an early alarm, announcing that a new voice had been born within the rich and unrestrained tradition of Chilean poetry. This current volume contains a marvelous selection of Lihn’s pioneering early work, translated exquisitely by Jonathan Cohen and David Unger, and introduced by the Chilean journalist and Lihn scholar Roberto Brodsky.
Buy Celeste, Daughter of the Earth and Other Early Poems
Lihn was without a doubt the best poet of his generation, the so-called Generación del 50, and one of the three or four best poets born between 1925 and 1935. Or maybe one of the two best . . . To engage with his poetry is to confront a voice that questions everything. That voice, however, does not come from hell, nor from millenarian prophecies, nor even from a prophesying ego. Rather, it is the voice of an enlightened citizen, a citizen who hopes to reach modernity or who is resignedly modern.
— Roberto Bolaño
Enrique Lihn is a unique poet; like Rimbaud, he is tempted to keep silent. By maintaining the rent between language and reality, however, he has turned the act of writing poetry into its own defense.
— George Yudice, Review: Latin American Literature and Art
There is no lucidity like that of Enrique Lihn.
— Nicanor Parra
Profuse, inspired, and passionate.
— Booklist
Buy Celeste, Daughter of the Earth and Other Early Poems
