Mexico in My Heart

Willis Barnstone is a literature in himself: poet, translator, interpreter, in one year he can range from Jesus to Sappho and Borges with calm authority and good humour. He re-translates the New Testament in a version Harold Bloom describes as ‘a superb act of restoration’. Borges himself declared, ‘Four of the best things in America are Whitman’s Leaves, Melville’s Whale, the sonnets of Barnstone’s The Secret Reader, and my daily Corn Flakes…’ Mexico in My Heart is the essential Barnstone, drawing on fifteen collections, poetry from six decades of writing and from several continents. He went to Mexico at the age of fifteen and, gathering languages and literatures, has never stopped learning.

Willis Barnstone is one of America’s most prolific and highly regarded translators and poets. His first published poem appeared in the Anglo-French periodical Points. His first book of poems published in the United States was From This White Island, reflecting on his time on an island in Greece. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and is presently Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington.