Sun Unwound: Original Texts from Occupied America

The result of a 20-year collaboration between poet Edward Dorn and scholar Gordon Brotherston, The Sun Unwound gathers together the disparate voices of oppressed Americans through the centuries: the hymns, songs, and prayers of Mezoamericans and other native peoples; the verse of eight Latin American guerillas of the 1960s; and works by three of Latin America's most important avant-garde poets of the 20th century. The Native Americans saw their cultures obliterated; most of the guerillas died in their struggles; and the modernists faced persecution, prison, and torture for their left-wing convictions. Previously untranslated or unavailable to most North Americans, their poems offer a striking counterpoint to the colonialist, capitalist, Anglo-Saxon ethos.

The English translations of these works are accompanied throughout by interlineal or facing texts in the original language. From an Inca love song to an Aztec lament, from Luis de la Puente's "Forward Guerrillas" to Cesar Vallego's "The Black Heralds," this is an extraordinary collection of poems.

The result of a 20-year collaboration between poet Edward Dorn and scholar Gordon Brotherston, The Sun Unwound gathers together the disparate voices of oppressed Americans through the centuries: the hymns, songs, and prayers of Mezoamericans and other native peoples; the verse of eight Latin American guerillas of the 1960s; and works by three of Latin America's most important avant-garde poets of the 20th century. The Native Americans saw their cultures obliterated; most of the guerillas died in their struggles; and the modernists faced persecution, prison, and torture for their left-wing convictions. Previously untranslated or unavailable to most North Americans, their poems offer a striking counterpoint to the colonialist, capitalist, Anglo-Saxon ethos.

The English translations of these works are accompanied throughout by interlineal or facing texts in the original language. From an Inca love song to an Aztec lament, from Luis de la Puente's "Forward Guerrillas" to Cesar Vallego's "The Black Heralds," this is an extraordinary collection of poems.

Edward Dorn is a professor in the Creative Writing/English department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has been the recipient of a Fullbright Lectureship at the University of Essex, a D.H. Lawrence Fellowship, an American Book Award, and an American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Gordon Brotherston is a research professor at the University of Essex and Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. He helped to set up the Latin American program at the University of Essex in 1965 and has devoted his interest to the indigenous cultures which flourished for thousands of years before Columbus. He has been awarded fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the British Academy, and the Guggenheim Foundation.