"The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry" is an admirable prose work by Octavio Paz of Mexico. As the book's subtitle indicates, these essays explore various aspects of the world of poetry. The book has been translated from Spanish into a very readable English by Helen Lane.

Paz considers the work and legacies of many poets: Dante, Milton, Whitman, Sor Juana, Eliot, Baudelaire, and others. He questions the concepts of modernity and postmodernity, and considers various interrelated avant-garde literary movements: Futurism, Dadaism, Simultaneism, etc. He also reflects on the relationship between his own poetry and prose writings.

Along the way are some marvelous nuggets, such as his definition of a poem: "a thing made of words, for the purpose of containing and secreting a substance that is impalpable, resistant to definition, and called poetry" (from "The Few and the Many"). The book ends on a prophetic note of hope: ". . . I can say, with a modicum of certainty, that as long as there are people, there will be poetry." I recommend "The Other Voice" to all those interested in Latin American literature or poetry in general.

"Every poem is fire" There are some writters whose work gives light to his time and whose destiny is to survive to his contemporaries. Octavio Paz has been one of them. His poetry knows how to revive in front of new eyes. In this book the images fly all around. In "Vuelta" the reader find himself and run on the Octavio Paz's birds.

Words drop slowly, one after another, in long languid sentences. Reading WHAT THE NIGHT TELLS THE DAY is a bit like sitting at the knee of an old storyteller and listening carefully to his tale. Like all reminiscences, this one tends to drift a bit. Stories come out to startle the reader, and and then retreat, changing into something else - a philosophical discourse, perhaps. Yet, somehow, the slight unevenness in tone seems to make the book all the more authentic. Disconcerting for purists, the book's "identity" might annoy some readers. The cover declares it to be a novel, but the inside jacket tell us that the writer has turned from his usual fiction and has written a classical autobiography. The problem here may be that no one knows how to classify this beautiful tale. But the style is truly one of memoir; it is not long within the pages of this book that the reader forgets about the question of fiction vs. memoir and gets lost in the power of the writing. It no longer matters whether the words are near truth or disguised truth. One just feels the characters and, most importantly, the feeling. Bianciotti's strength is an almost pastoral sense of portraying the personal. He renders an interior life for an outside audience in a way not unlike a minister interpreting the Bible for his/her parishoners. The book shuld be read by anyone wanting to read prose of tremendous power and by readers interested in the entire emotional package of the homosexual experience, not necessarily the erotic. Bianciotti does all of this well, but not as well as Yukio Mishima who covered much the same material in his classic novel, CONFESSIONS OF A MASK. The two books have similarities, but Mishima's is far superior, and as well as allowing the reader inside of the mind of someone coming to terms with their sexuality, Mishima gives much more of a feeling of Japan than Bianciotti manages of Argentina. Still, WHAT THE NIGHT TELLS THE DAY is highly recommended.

A series of poems from one of Mexico's best prose writers presented here showing his skill in the medium of verse.His best poems are the one's with intense lyrical touch; a highlight of grandeur & marvel at the poet's relationship with the creation of the word & the world around him. The best works lie in the shorter efforts.My rating for this is 3 & a half stars.