The New World Written: Selected Poems

The poetry of Maria Baranda is a haunting homage to the natural world: transcendent in scope, attentive to the particular, and acutely aware of the mystery of being. Absorbed by nature’s otherness, Baranda seeks to inhabit the voices of the wind, of wings, night, day, and perhaps most keenly, water. These lyrical verses turn repeatedly to the longings and griefs of embodiment: What is that God / To be praised with all our sadness / If not love / Or at least the wonder / Of being a body full of blood, Baranda asks.

Drawing on epics such as the Aeneid and Beowulf, the mystical verses of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and writers who engage the landscape of shore and sea from Daniel Defoe to Dylan Thomas, this sweeping collection brings together the finest poems of one of today’s most powerful and innovative Mexican writers.