A Sor Juana Anthology

Rating:
Summary: Horrid horrid translation
Review: Sor Juana was a seventeenth century Mexican nun who was also a notable poet. Unfortunately, this particular translation (by Trueblood) is quite execrable. Translating poetry is dicey business at best and is perhaps best handled with a literal translation and occasional footnotes. Trueblood imposed rhymes where there were none in the original and a rather jangling rhythm more appropriate for twentieth-century Madison Avenue than seventeenth-century Mexico City. His introduction also seems to distort some of Sor Juana's attitudes to meet his own ideology. Thankfully, the book also includes the poems in the original Spanish.