These exquisite love poems, some of them clearly addressed to women, were written by the visionary and passionate genius of Mexican letters, the seventeenth-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In this volume they are translated into the idiom of our own time by poets Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique. Some of them are rooted in Renaissance courtly conventions; others are startlingly ahead of their time, seemingly modern in the naked power of the complex sexual feelings they address.

Joan Larkin has published the poetry collections Housework, A Long Sound, and Cold River. The editor of numerous anthologies, she is the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards for Poetry. She teaches poetry writing at Sarah Lawrence and New England Colleges. Jaime Manrique is the author of the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, the novels Twilight at the Equator, Latin Moon in Manhattan, and Colombian Gold, and two poetry collections, My Night with Federico García Lorca and Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus. He lives in New York City and is an associate professor in the MFA program at Columbia University.