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From the Lightning: Selected Poems

Gonzalo Rojas

Translated from the Spanish, with a Foreward by John Oliver Simon, Introduction by Gonzalo Rojas

A Bilingual Edition

One of the greatest contemporary Chilean poets, Gonzalo Rojas was born in Lebu, Chile in 1917, the seventh son of a coal miner. His vocation as a poet, he suggests, began with a stroke of lightning, when one of his brothers spoke the word RE-LAM-PA-GO, which suddenly seemed more awe-inspiring than the force of nature. "Since then, I have lived in the zumbido, the buzzing of words."

From 1936, when Rojas joined the surrealist group Mandragora, to the present Rojas has published major collections of poetry, including La Miseria del Hombe (1948), Contra la Muerte (1964), Oscuro (1977), Transtierro (1979), Del relámpago (1981), 50 poemas (1982), El alumbrado (1968), Materia de testamento (1988), Despreocupado lector (1990), and Rio turbio (1996)—selections from all of these volumes appearing in From the Lightning.