50 books like Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral

By Gabriela Mistral, Doris Dana (editor),

Here are 50 books that Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral fans have personally recommended if you like Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth

Jesse Wolfe Author Of En Route

From my list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a poet, lover of great literature, and an English professor who has served as faculty advisor to my university’s student-run literary journal. I caught the bug as a teenager when I first started reading and memorizing poems that moved and intrigued me. Since then, reading and writing poetry—and having the pleasure of teaching it to students—has been my best way of checking in with myself to see what’s most important to me that I may have lost sight of in the daily bustle. It’s also my best way of going beyond myself—allowing my imagination to carry me to unexpected places.

Jesse's book list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing

Jesse Wolfe Why did Jesse love this book?

I love Wordsworth’s poetry (and his comments on the creative process) for its beauty and its importance to the history of the art form. His best poems—especially Tintern Abbey and his Intimations or Immortality Ode—tell psychological and spiritual tales about the gains and losses of growing up, and the role that nature can play in a person’s maturation. 

His Preface to Lyrical Ballads lays out a Romantic program for poetry that has been hugely influential for two centuries. Wordsworth’s idea that poetry comes from “emotion recollected in tranquility” and captures the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” encapsulates how, for me and countless other writers, reflecting on personal memories provides a storehouse of poetic material.

By William Wordsworth,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With an Introduction by Antonia Till.

William Wordsworth (1771-1850) is the foremost of the English Romantic poets. He was much influenced by the events of the French Revolution in his youth, and he deliberately broke away from the artificial diction of the Augustan and neo-classical tradition of the eighteenth century. He sought to write in the language of ordinary men and women, of ordinary thoughts, sights and sounds, and his early poetry represents this fresh approach to his art.

Wordsworth spent most of his adult life in the Lake District with his sister Dorothy and his wife Mary, by whom…


Book cover of The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950

Jesse Wolfe Author Of En Route

From my list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a poet, lover of great literature, and an English professor who has served as faculty advisor to my university’s student-run literary journal. I caught the bug as a teenager when I first started reading and memorizing poems that moved and intrigued me. Since then, reading and writing poetry—and having the pleasure of teaching it to students—has been my best way of checking in with myself to see what’s most important to me that I may have lost sight of in the daily bustle. It’s also my best way of going beyond myself—allowing my imagination to carry me to unexpected places.

Jesse's book list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing

Jesse Wolfe Why did Jesse love this book?

I also love Eliot’s poetry (and his comments on the creative process) because of how different they are from Wordsworth’s—and equally profound. In essays including Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot argues that keeping your poetry “personal” artificially limits your material. And I think he’s right: some of my own best poems come from imagining my way into someone else’s mind.

Eliot’s own poetry, including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, illustrates the value of this approach in how it crafts its titular character. Eliot can also write deeply intellectual poems like The Waste Land that transcend purely “personal” concerns by exploring history and that repay many re-readings. In addition to their thematic richness, Wordsworth’s and Eliot’s poems are also beautifully musical.

By T. S. Eliot,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Complete Poems and Plays as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An indispensable collection of the Nobel Prize winner's most renowned works

“In ten years’ time,” wrote Edmund Wilson in Axel’s Castle, “Eliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than that of any other poet writing in English.” In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his work as a trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry.”

This book is made up of six individual titles: Four Quartets, Collected Poems: 1909–1935, Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and The Cocktail Party. It offers not only enjoyment of one of the great talents…


Book cover of Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Poems

Jesse Wolfe Author Of En Route

From my list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a poet, lover of great literature, and an English professor who has served as faculty advisor to my university’s student-run literary journal. I caught the bug as a teenager when I first started reading and memorizing poems that moved and intrigued me. Since then, reading and writing poetry—and having the pleasure of teaching it to students—has been my best way of checking in with myself to see what’s most important to me that I may have lost sight of in the daily bustle. It’s also my best way of going beyond myself—allowing my imagination to carry me to unexpected places.

Jesse's book list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing

Jesse Wolfe Why did Jesse love this book?

As much as any writer I know, Jorge Luis Borges soars in both poetry and fiction. His short stories would make him a candidate for my top five fiction authors, and they make a great bridge to his poetry.

With their profound examinations of the mysteries of selfhood and time, their love letters to the activities of reading and writing, and their reimagining of the past—from his native Argentina to Europe and beyond—Borges’s poems offer endless riches for my mind and my heart.

By Jorge Luis Borges, Alexander Coleman (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jorge Luis Borges as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The largest collection of poetry ever assembled in English by "the most important Spanish-language writer since Cervantes" (Mario Vargas Llosa)

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, it draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges's first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los conjurados, published just a year before his death in…


Book cover of Poems from the Book of Hours

Jesse Wolfe Author Of En Route

From my list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a poet, lover of great literature, and an English professor who has served as faculty advisor to my university’s student-run literary journal. I caught the bug as a teenager when I first started reading and memorizing poems that moved and intrigued me. Since then, reading and writing poetry—and having the pleasure of teaching it to students—has been my best way of checking in with myself to see what’s most important to me that I may have lost sight of in the daily bustle. It’s also my best way of going beyond myself—allowing my imagination to carry me to unexpected places.

Jesse's book list on poetry on personal growth and spiritual questing

Jesse Wolfe Why did Jesse love this book?

I’m captivated by the speakers in these poems: Russian monks, totally committed to their faith, whose god is more a product of their imaginations than something that can exist without them. In fact, this god is lonely, anxious, and dependent on the artist-monks for his existence.

With images of cathedral-building, prisons (prisons of the self, that is), and sunrises, Rilke brings to life a mysterious form of devotion that is also a kind of art. These poems are haunting and peaceful at the same time and very beautiful.

By Rainer Maria Rilke, Babette Deutsch (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Poems from the Book of Hours as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Although The Book of Hours is the work of Rilke's youth, it contains the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously received prayers, these poems celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe but rather humanityitself and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. Babette Deutsch's classic translations-born from "the pure desire to sing what thepoet sang" (Ursula K. Le Guin)-capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, transporting the reader to new heights of inspiration and musicality.


Book cover of Space Invaders

Steven Arntson Author Of The Wikkeling

From my list on short contemporary novels in translation.

Why am I passionate about this?

My writing career has been in middle grade and YA, but as a reader I’m always trying to branch out. When I was a kid, literature opened the door to the whole world, and as an adult, I’m still exploring. When I read work in translation I can feel the literary connection to other writers and thinkers and simultaneously appreciate the differences that arise through geographic and cultural heritage. I hope my selections here might help readers like myself who enjoy reaching out to new voices and places.

Steven's book list on short contemporary novels in translation

Steven Arntson Why did Steven love this book?

Translated from Spanish and a mere 70 pages in length, you may be hungry for more (as I was) when you've finished this bracingly brief story. Fortunately, you can pick up this author's The Twilight Zone (as I did) to read a longer exploration by this author of the events and themes introduced here. Fernández writes from the perspective of a young person living during the Pinochet regime in Chile, evoking the time with an extended metaphor about the ‘80s video game Space Invaders. The concerns of the young are strangely pushed and pulled by the terrible realities of that regime, which, like an invader from another world, descends upon their lives.

By Nona Fernández, Natasha Wimmer (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Space Invaders as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature

A dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile

Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella’s braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella’s father was a…


Book cover of Madwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral

Chriselda Barretto Author Of The Creep: A First of Its Kind Narrative Poetry in a Thriller Genre!

From my list on poetry from the world's greatest female poets.

Why am I passionate about this?

Chriselda is a multi-genre, prolific author, and speaker, with a background in Business Administration and Chemistry/Microbiology. She speaks 5 languages & has published over 50 books. Her expansive writing covers poetry, horror, thriller, romance, children’s illustration, educational... but she enjoys telling a story in narrative poetry the most. Currently, she is working on her next dark poetry book Me and Him, where she will invoke one of the greatest poets – EA Poe. In her effort to promote more learning, she is also wrapping up the fourth book in her - Sigils, Symbols and Alchemy Series. Her passion for writing, lifelong learning, creativity, and her curiosity all help spark her innovative mindset.

Chriselda's book list on poetry from the world's greatest female poets

Chriselda Barretto Why did Chriselda love this book?

Gabriela was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator, and humanist, who became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. Her poetry often focuses on dark, humane themes that undoubtedly reflect on traumatic episodes that she had personally endured. 

Gabriela has the knack of scratching the surface, which is potent enough to get all your senses actively experiencing the emotions and character she puts forth. The poems resonate on a deep level, offering a compelling clarity of life with its tragedy and complications. The women depicted here are anything but mad; some would say entirely strong-willed and intense, with a collected control and a modernistic sense of independence.

By Gabriela Mistral, Randall Couch (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Madwomen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) is one of the most important and enigmatic figures in twentieth-century Latin American literature. The Locas mujeres poems collected here are among Mistral's most complex and compelling, exploring facets of the self in extremis - poems marked by the wound of blazing catastrophe and its aftermath of mourning. Madwomen promises to reveal a profound poet to a new generation while reacquainting Spanish readers with a stranger, more complicated 'madwoman' than most have ever known.


Book cover of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability

Tom Gething Author Of Under a False Flag

From my list on covert ops in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m always delighted when a reader asks, “Did you work for the CIA?” It tells me I achieved the verisimilitude I was striving for in Under a False Flag. I’m also proud that my novel has been included in a university-level Latin American history curriculum. That tells me I got the history right. No aspect of modern history is more intriguing or controversial than the role covert action played, for better or worse, in the Cold War. With the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took us to the brink of nuclear disaster, the Cold War in Latin America was mostly fought in the shadows with markedly ambivalent achievements.

Tom's book list on covert ops in Latin America

Tom Gething Why did Tom love this book?

The 1973 coup in Chile violently destroyed the freely elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende and installed the brutal 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. For years afterward suspicions swirled that the U.S. was behind the event. But evidence was largely anecdotal. What is so impressive about this book is Kornbluh’s persistence deploying the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of classified documents related to the coup. Kornbluh connects the dots and reveals the smoking guns. Through facsimiles of actual cables, telexes, and phone memos (many still highly redacted) this dossier allows you to draw your own conclusions about what really happened in Chile.

By Peter Kornbluh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Pinochet File as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Pinochet File reveals a record of complicity with atrocity by the U.S. government. The documents, first declassified for the original edition of the book, formed the heart of the campaign to hold Gen. Pinochet accountable for murder, torture and terrorism. The New York Times wrote of the original 2003 edition, 'Thanks to Peter Kornbluh, we have the first complete, almost day-to-day and fully documented record of this sordid chapter in Cold War American History.' With this 40th anniversary edition, the record is even more complete and up-to-date.


Book cover of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

Sidik Fofana Author Of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs

From my list on poetry collections with the best sense of voice.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love hip hop. It’s basically poetry with a beat. I'm always thinking of literature in terms of rhythm and delivery. Creatively, my inspirations come from lyricists. I look at poets the same way. They accomplish wonderful feats with words. From years of listening to classic albums, I can feel the aliveness of a good verse. It’s also an element I try to tap into as a fiction writer. I'm a recipient of the 2023 Whiting Award and was also named an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2018. My work has appeared in the Sewanee Review and Granta. He is the author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs. 

Sidik's book list on poetry collections with the best sense of voice

Sidik Fofana Why did Sidik love this book?

God bless Neruda, old school favorite of all time. Everybody knows his love poems, but this dude's other poems were equally off the wall.

I guess the social activists would love “El Pueblo” which describes one working man and every working man all the same, how they are invisible but steadfast with their hammers on the coal, laboring day to day making the world go round. It’s the most wonderful memorial.

I also love his odes – “Ode to Criticism” the first one which is like, critics suck and then the second version which is like, well, maybe critics have some worth. There’s “Ode to the Dictionary”, too. We need to resurrect this man, for real. 

By Pablo Neruda, Ilan Stavans (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Poetry of Pablo Neruda as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda offers the most comprehensive English-language collection ever by "the greatest poet of the twentieth century--in any language" (Gabriel García Márquez).

"In his work a continent awakens to consciousness." So wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, lionized during his lifetime as "the people's poet."

This selection of Neruda's poetry, the most comprehensive single volume available in English, presents nearly six hundred poems, scores of them in new and sometimes multiple translations, and many…


Book cover of My Tender Matador

Trebor Healey Author Of A Horse Named Sorrow

From my list on erotic themes that are imaginative and insightful.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been writing stories and poems with erotic themes since I first entered the spoken word scene in 1980s San Francisco. As a young queer boy, raised in the highly eroticized Catholic Church, I was actually comfortable talking about and writing about sex and eros as I’d been stigmatized by it, and it got me fascinated with what the big deal was and why writers were afraid to approach it or why they did so in a corny/predictable/idealized and/or often dishonest and clumsy way. Soon I was teaching erotic writing and have been integrating it into my writing in honest, fresh, and enlivening ways—and helping others do soever since.

Trebor's book list on erotic themes that are imaginative and insightful

Trebor Healey Why did Trebor love this book?

Lemebel was a courageous and flamboyant activist during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Having lived in Chile myself, I think this book captures the erotic Chilean soul in all its humor, grief, and idealism at an important historical moment. The hopelessly romantic and delightfully ironic seamstress/protagonist Queen of the Corner lives on a rooftop in one of Santiago’s poorest barrios and hosts discussion groups by local leftist students who keep leaving behind really heavy boxes, ostensibly full of books, as they prepare a vague plan that will have enormous implications. The group’s ringleader Carlos is a charmer ala Che Guevara, and the Queen is soon head over heels in love as a friendship and a tender unrequited love affair begins. A story of remarkable humanism that mixes the erotic with revolution.

By Pedro Lemebel, Katherine Silver (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked My Tender Matador as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Centered around the 1986 attempt on the life of Augusto Pinochet, an event that changed Chile forever, My Tender Matador is one of the most explosive, controversial, and popular novels to have been published in that country in decades. It is spring 1986 in the city of Santiago, and Augusto Pinochet is losing his grip on power. In one of the city's many poor neighborhoods works the Queen of the Corner, a hopeless and lonely romantic who embroiders linens for the wealthy and listens to boleros to drown out the gunshots and rioting in the streets. Along comes Carlos, a…


Book cover of Buying Into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States

Allyson Brantley Author Of Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism

From my list on boycotts & consumer activism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Colorado-raised and California-based historian, professor, and writer. I recently published my first book, Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism, which explores the history of one of the longest-running consumer boycotts in American history – the boycott of Coors beer. In telling this particular history, I became fascinated with the boycott as a tool of protest and activism. The boycott is an iconic and regular feature of American politics and history, but it is often dismissed as ineffective or passive. The books on this list (as well as many others) have helped to convince me that the boycott and consumer activism can be powerful forms of solidarity-building and protest.

Allyson's book list on boycotts & consumer activism

Allyson Brantley Why did Allyson love this book?

You’ll never look at table grapes the same after reading Tinsman’s excellent Buying into the Regime. Her book takes a different approach from the texts above – instead of looking at a single movement, she focuses on a single industry (Chilean grapes) in multiple contexts: cultivation in Chile, Cold War consumption in the United States, and consumer activism and grape boycotts in both nations. The result is a remarkable transnational history that underscores how consumption itself is a “terrain of political struggle.” Tinsman’s expansive perspective, which engages a number of different fields, also offers lessons for activists in the age of globalization, notably that building transnational alliances is incredibly difficult work.

By Heidi Tinsman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Buying Into the Regime as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Buying into the Regime is a transnational history of how Chilean grapes created new forms of consumption and labor politics in both the United States and Chile. After seizing power in 1973, Augusto Pinochet embraced neoliberalism, transforming Chile's economy. The country became the world's leading grape exporter. Heidi Tinsman traces the rise of Chile's fruit industry, examining how income from grape production enabled fruit workers, many of whom were women, to buy the commodities-appliances, clothing, cosmetics-flowing into Chile, and how this new consumerism influenced gender relations, as well as pro-democracy movements. Back in the United States, Chilean and U.S. businessmen…


Book cover of The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth
Book cover of The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950
Book cover of Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Poems

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