Sunstone/Piedra De Sol
By Octavio Paz
1957
First Published
4.33
Average Rating
68
Number of Pages
Presented in Eliot Weinberger's excellent new translation with the Spanish texts en face, this is the 1957 poem "that definitively established Paz as a major international figure" (Sagetrieb). Written as a single cyclical sentence (at the end of the poem the first six lines are written again), Sunstone is a tour de force of momentum. It takes as its structural basis the circular Aztec calendar, which measured the synodic period of the planet Venus (584 days—the number of lines of Sunstone). But, as The New Republic noted, "this esoteric correlative design... does not circumscribe its subject. [It is] a lyrically discursive exploration of time and memory, of erotic love, or art and writing."
Avg Rating
4.33
Number of Ratings
1,304
5 STARS
55%
4 STARS
28%
3 STARS
13%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
1%
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Author
Octavio Paz
Author · 36 books
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature ("for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.")
