"It gives me great pleasure to see the work of Benedetti, one of the great poets of our language, made available to US readers in Popkin's wonderful translations. Her carefully crafted adaptations of Mario's poems convey all the wisdom, nostalgia, and irony that inform his verses in language that retains their musicality. Anyone who has translated poetry will appreciate what an accomplishment that represents."—Claribel Alegria Mario Benedetti (1920–2009) is regarded as one of Latin America's most important twentieth-century writers and one of Uruguay's most revered writers of novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and essays.
Author
Mario Benedetti (full name: Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti Farugia) was a Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet. Despite publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages he was not well known in the English-speaking world. He is considered one of Latin America's most important 20th-century writers. Benedetti was a member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement and also wrote in the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha from 1945 until it was forcibly closed by the military government in 1973, and was its literary director from 1954. From 1973 to 1985 he lived in exile, and returned to Uruguay in March 1983 following the restoration of democracy.
