Alberto Blanco (poet)
Encyclopedia
Alberto Blanco is considered one of Mexico's most important poets. Born in Mexico City
on February 18, 1951, he spent his childhood and adolescence in that city, and he studied chemistry at the Universidad Iberoamericana
and philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. For two years, he pursued a Master’s Degree in Asian Studies, specializing in China, at El Colegio de México
.1 Blanco was first published in a journal in 1970. He was co-editor and designer of the poetry journal El Zaguan (1975–1977), and a grant recipient of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores (Mexican Center of Writers, 1977), el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (the National Institute of Fine Arts, 1980), and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Fund for Culture and Arts, 1990). In 1991 he received a grant from the Fulbright Program
as a poet-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine
; and, in 1992, he was awarded a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
. He was admitted into the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (National System of Creative Artists) in 1994, for which he has also been a juror. In 2001 he received the Octavio Paz
Grant for Poetry, and in 2008, he was awarded a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation
.
Blanco’s literary output has been very abundant and varied, and he has undertaken three genres: first, poetry, followed by essays, and, finally, translations. He has published twenty-six books of poetry in Mexico and additional books in other countries; ten books of his translations of the work of other poets; and twelve story books for children, some of which have been illustrated by his wife Patricia Revah. His work has been translated into a dozen languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Russian.2
In 1997 he accepted a residency in Bellagio, Italy, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation
; and in 2000 he was invited as a resident poet at the Poetry Center of the University of Arizona
. He was also invited to inaugurate the program, “La Universidad de la Poesía" ("The University of Poetry”), in Chile, where he gave readings, lectures, and workshops in various cities in that country.
Blanco has been involved in many of the most important poetry festivals in the world and has given many courses, workshops, readings, and lectures in more than twenty universities in the United States as well as in France, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Ireland, El Salvador, Chile, Belgium, and Sweden.
To date, he has published more than sixty books, along with twenty more of translations, anthologies, or illustrations as well as eight hundred publications in magazines, catalogs, newspapers, and literary supplements. More than 200 essays, reviews, and commentaries on his work have been published both in Mexico and other countries; more than fifty interviews with him have appeared. His poems are included in seventy anthologies, have been studied in various master’s and doctoral theses, and have been included in a dozen dictionaries and textbooks. His total publications exceed twelve hundred.
In 1988 he received the Carlos Pellicer
Poetry Prize for his book Cromos, and in 1989 the José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature
for Song to the Shadow of the Animals, a book that unites his poems with drawings by Francisco Toledo. In 1996 Insects Also Are Perfect received honors from IBBY in Holland. In 2002 he received the “Alfonso X (the Wise)” award for excellence in literary translation from San Diego State University
in California.
There are four anthologies of his poems: Amanecer de los Sentidos, published by the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Mexico in 1993; Dawn of the Senses, a bilingual anthology that included a dozen translators, published by City Lights
, in San Francisco, in 1995; De vierkantswrotel can de hemel, Gedichten, translated into Dutch by Bart Vonck and published by Wagner and Van Santen in Holland, 2002; and A Cage of Transparent Words, edited by Paul B. Roth, translated by eight translators, and published by The Bitter Oleander Press of New York.
In 1998, El Corazon del Instante (The Heart of the Moment), a compilation of twelve volumes of poetry that included twenty-five years (1968–1993) of work was published in a series of major Mexican works; and in 2005 a second compilation of another twelve books of poetry entitled La Hora y la Neblina (The Hour and the Mist) was published in the same series by the same publisher (Fondo de la Cultura Economica).
Blanco has collaborated with numerous painters, sculptors and photographers, and his essays on the visual arts are published in many catalogs and magazines. In 1998 they were collected in one volume: Las voces del ver (The Voices of Vision). This book served as a basis for a television series of programs with the same name which were shown on Mexican television. A new edition, revised and augmented of his essays on visual arts, will be published in 2008, entitled El eco de las formas (The Echo of Forms).
In fact, Alberto Blanco is well known as a visual artist; his collages have appeared in many books and journals, and his paintings have hung in national galleries. He has had several showings in California, and in 2007, exhibited 108 collages in the Estación Indianilla in Mexico City, along with recent sculptures by Leonora Carrington
. Equally noteworthy are his artist’s books which form part of important collections in various universities in the United States. In 2011, The Athenaeum in La Jolla, California, mounted a retrospective exhibit of forty years of Blanco's artist's books entitled "Visual Poetry/Poesía Visual." http://www.ljathenaeum.org/exhibitions.html. Furthermore, he has been a song composer, and he was singer and keyboardist in the rock and jazz groups “La Comuna” (“The Commune”) and “Las Plumas Atómicas” ("The Atomic Pens").
Although he has dedicated himself chiefly to the writing of poetry and has not embarked on an academic career (in Mexico he has never taught at any institution), he was a full-time professor for three years (1993–1996) in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso
. At the end of 1996, he returned with his family to Mexico City, but in 1998 and 1999, he was invited as a distinguished professor to San Diego State University in California. In 2007 he was awarded an endowed chair, the Knapp Chair, for a semester at the University of San Diego
. In 2009 and 2010, Blanco taught courses in art at Middlebury College
, and he was invited to teach literature courses at the University of California, San Diego
(UCSD), in 2009 and 2010.
Blanco’s most recent book of poetry is entitled: Música de cámara instantánea (Music of the Instant Camera or Instant Chamber Music) (2005) and consists of fifty-two poems dedicated to the same number of composers of contemporary music. (Note: this is not his most recent anthology.)
Critical discussion and acclaim of Blanco’s work abounds, both in Mexico and abroad. Regarding Dawn of the Senses, Mexican poet Jose Emilio Pacheco
, in his introduction to the book, writes, “[Blanco] is someone in whom, as Henry James said, nothing is lost. Everything streams into his words, so many tributaries feed into the flow of his poetry. His knowledge of chemistry, his work as a visual artist and jazz musician, his grounding in Chinese literature and Zen Buddhism--all of these combine to give his poems a tone and perspective unlike any other Mexican poet." 3 W.S Merwin concludes that, “Alberto Blanco’s poems, over several decades, have revealed with precision and delicacy an original imaginative landscape and imagery that are at once intimate, spacious, and rooted in the rich ground of Mexican poetry…” 4 “Alberto Blanco is the master of bright, clear, and sudden awarenesses that are the flesh and light so special to his poetry…” observes Michael McClure
.5
Describing Blanco’s work in A Cage of Transparent Words (2007), Gary Snyder
writes:
Poetry Books Published in Mexico
Giros de faros, Colección Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1979. (Second Edition, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1985.)
El largo camino hacia ti, Cuadernos de Poesía, UNAM, Mexico, 1980.
Antes de nacer, Libros del Salmón, Editorial Penélope, Mexico, 1983.
Tras el rayo, Cuarto Menguante Editores, Guadalajara, 1985.
Cromos, Colección Tezontle, Fondo de Cultura Económica, INBA and SEP, Mexico, 1987.
Canto a la sombra de los animales, in collaboration with the Mexican artist Toledo, Galería López Quiroga, Mexico, 1988.
El libro de los pájaros, Ediciones Toledo, Mexico, 1990.
Materia prima, El Ala del Tigre, UNAM, Mexico, 1992.
Cuenta de los guías, Ediciones Era, Mexico, 1992.
Amanecer de los sentidos, a personal anthology, with an introduction by Alvaro Mutis, Lecturas Mexicanas, Third Series, Num. 79, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico, 1993.
El corazón del instante, a collection of twelve poetry books, Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1998.
Este silencio, a book of 68 haikus and 4 tankas, illustrated by Xavier Sagarra, Editorial Verdehalago, México, 1998.
Más de este silencio, a book of 40 haikus, illustrated by Susana Sierra, Ediciones del Ermitaño, México, 2001.
El libro de las piedras, Práctica Mortal, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico, 2003.
Medio cielo, with illustrations by Felipe Morales, Artes de México and Librería Grañén Porrúa, Mexico, 2004.
La hora y la neblina, second collection of twelve books of poetry:
Colección Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 2005.
Música de cámara instantánea, 52 poems dedicated to contemporary music composers, Cuadernos de Pauta, CONACULTA, Mexico, 2005.
Poetry Books Published in the United States and Other Countries
Dawn of the Senses, a bilingual poetry anthology including poems from nine books of poetry and some new poems, edited by Juvenal Acosta, and translated by W. S. Merwin, Edith Grossman, Eliot Weinberger, Julian Palley, John Oliver Simon, Mark Schafer, James Nolan, Jennifer Clement, Robert L. Jones, Joanne Saltz, Joseph Pitkin and Reginald Gibbons, City Lights, San Francisco, California, 1995.
El origen y la huella/The Origin and the Trace, images by Alberto Dilger, translation by Julian Palley, Circa, San Diego, 2000.
De vierkantswortel van de hemel, Gedichten, translation by Bart Vonck, Wagner & Van Santen, Holland, 2002.
Pequeñas historias de misterio, illustrated by Luis Mayo, Galería Estampa, Madrid, 2002.
A la lumière de la nuit / A la luz de la noche, illustrated with collages translated into French by Danièle Bonnefois, Manière Noire Editeur, Vernon, France, 2005.
A Cage of Transparent Words, a selection of poems by Alberto Blanco, a bilingual anthology with poems from nine of his books, edited by Paul B. Roth and translated into English by Judith Infante, Joan Lindgren, Elise Miller, Edgardo Moctezuma, Gustavo V. Segade, Anthony Seidman, John Oliver Simon and Kathleen Snodgrass, The Bitter Oleander Press, New York, 2007.
Feu nouveau / Fuego Nuevo, a bilingual poetry anthology, translation by Stéphane Chaumet, L'Oreille du Loup, Paris, 2009.
Emily Dickenson: 55 poemas, translation and prologue by Alberto Blanco, Poesía Hiperion, Madrid, 2010.
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
on February 18, 1951, he spent his childhood and adolescence in that city, and he studied chemistry at the Universidad Iberoamericana
Universidad Iberoamericana
The Ibero-American University is a Mexican private institution of higher education sponsored by the Society of Jesus...
and philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. For two years, he pursued a Master’s Degree in Asian Studies, specializing in China, at El Colegio de México
El Colegio de México
El Colegio de México, A.C. is a prestigious Mexican institute of higher education, specializing in teaching and research in the social sciences and the humanities...
.1 Blanco was first published in a journal in 1970. He was co-editor and designer of the poetry journal El Zaguan (1975–1977), and a grant recipient of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores (Mexican Center of Writers, 1977), el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (the National Institute of Fine Arts, 1980), and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Fund for Culture and Arts, 1990). In 1991 he received a grant from the Fulbright Program
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...
as a poet-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
; and, in 1992, he was awarded a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
. He was admitted into the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (National System of Creative Artists) in 1994, for which he has also been a juror. In 2001 he received the Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
Grant for Poetry, and in 2008, he was awarded a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
.
Blanco’s literary output has been very abundant and varied, and he has undertaken three genres: first, poetry, followed by essays, and, finally, translations. He has published twenty-six books of poetry in Mexico and additional books in other countries; ten books of his translations of the work of other poets; and twelve story books for children, some of which have been illustrated by his wife Patricia Revah. His work has been translated into a dozen languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Russian.2
In 1997 he accepted a residency in Bellagio, Italy, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
; and in 2000 he was invited as a resident poet at the Poetry Center of the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
. He was also invited to inaugurate the program, “La Universidad de la Poesía" ("The University of Poetry”), in Chile, where he gave readings, lectures, and workshops in various cities in that country.
Blanco has been involved in many of the most important poetry festivals in the world and has given many courses, workshops, readings, and lectures in more than twenty universities in the United States as well as in France, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Ireland, El Salvador, Chile, Belgium, and Sweden.
To date, he has published more than sixty books, along with twenty more of translations, anthologies, or illustrations as well as eight hundred publications in magazines, catalogs, newspapers, and literary supplements. More than 200 essays, reviews, and commentaries on his work have been published both in Mexico and other countries; more than fifty interviews with him have appeared. His poems are included in seventy anthologies, have been studied in various master’s and doctoral theses, and have been included in a dozen dictionaries and textbooks. His total publications exceed twelve hundred.
In 1988 he received the Carlos Pellicer
Carlos Pellicer
Carlos Pellicer Cámara , born in Villahermosa, Tabasco, was part of the first wave of modernist Mexican poets and was heavily active in the promotion of Mexican art and literature...
Poetry Prize for his book Cromos, and in 1989 the José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature
José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature
José Fuentes Mares National Prize for Literature is a Mexican literary award that has been presented annually since 1985 by the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. It is given to a Mexican author who has published a book in the form of short stories, poems or a novel...
for Song to the Shadow of the Animals, a book that unites his poems with drawings by Francisco Toledo. In 1996 Insects Also Are Perfect received honors from IBBY in Holland. In 2002 he received the “Alfonso X (the Wise)” award for excellence in literary translation from San Diego State University
San Diego State University
San Diego State University , founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, is the largest and oldest higher education facility in the greater San Diego area , and is part of the California State University system...
in California.
There are four anthologies of his poems: Amanecer de los Sentidos, published by the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Mexico in 1993; Dawn of the Senses, a bilingual anthology that included a dozen translators, published by City Lights
City Lights
City Lights is a 1931 American silent film and romantic comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. It also has the leads Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Although "talking" pictures were on the rise since 1928, City Lights was immediately popular. Today, it is thought of...
, in San Francisco, in 1995; De vierkantswrotel can de hemel, Gedichten, translated into Dutch by Bart Vonck and published by Wagner and Van Santen in Holland, 2002; and A Cage of Transparent Words, edited by Paul B. Roth, translated by eight translators, and published by The Bitter Oleander Press of New York.
In 1998, El Corazon del Instante (The Heart of the Moment), a compilation of twelve volumes of poetry that included twenty-five years (1968–1993) of work was published in a series of major Mexican works; and in 2005 a second compilation of another twelve books of poetry entitled La Hora y la Neblina (The Hour and the Mist) was published in the same series by the same publisher (Fondo de la Cultura Economica).
Blanco has collaborated with numerous painters, sculptors and photographers, and his essays on the visual arts are published in many catalogs and magazines. In 1998 they were collected in one volume: Las voces del ver (The Voices of Vision). This book served as a basis for a television series of programs with the same name which were shown on Mexican television. A new edition, revised and augmented of his essays on visual arts, will be published in 2008, entitled El eco de las formas (The Echo of Forms).
In fact, Alberto Blanco is well known as a visual artist; his collages have appeared in many books and journals, and his paintings have hung in national galleries. He has had several showings in California, and in 2007, exhibited 108 collages in the Estación Indianilla in Mexico City, along with recent sculptures by Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington OBE was a British-born Mexican artist, a surrealist painter and a novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City.-Early life:...
. Equally noteworthy are his artist’s books which form part of important collections in various universities in the United States. In 2011, The Athenaeum in La Jolla, California, mounted a retrospective exhibit of forty years of Blanco's artist's books entitled "Visual Poetry/Poesía Visual." http://www.ljathenaeum.org/exhibitions.html. Furthermore, he has been a song composer, and he was singer and keyboardist in the rock and jazz groups “La Comuna” (“The Commune”) and “Las Plumas Atómicas” ("The Atomic Pens").
Although he has dedicated himself chiefly to the writing of poetry and has not embarked on an academic career (in Mexico he has never taught at any institution), he was a full-time professor for three years (1993–1996) in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso
University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas at El Paso is a four-year state university, and is a component institution of the University of Texas System. Its campus is located on the bank of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas. The school was founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy,...
. At the end of 1996, he returned with his family to Mexico City, but in 1998 and 1999, he was invited as a distinguished professor to San Diego State University in California. In 2007 he was awarded an endowed chair, the Knapp Chair, for a semester at the University of San Diego
University of San Diego
The University of San Diego is a Roman Catholic university in San Diego, California. USD offers more than sixty bachelor's, master’s, and doctoral programs...
. In 2009 and 2010, Blanco taught courses in art at Middlebury College
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...
, and he was invited to teach literature courses at the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
(UCSD), in 2009 and 2010.
Blanco’s most recent book of poetry is entitled: Música de cámara instantánea (Music of the Instant Camera or Instant Chamber Music) (2005) and consists of fifty-two poems dedicated to the same number of composers of contemporary music. (Note: this is not his most recent anthology.)
Critical discussion and acclaim of Blanco’s work abounds, both in Mexico and abroad. Regarding Dawn of the Senses, Mexican poet Jose Emilio Pacheco
José Emilio Pacheco
José Emilio Pacheco Berny is a Mexican essayist, novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century....
, in his introduction to the book, writes, “[Blanco] is someone in whom, as Henry James said, nothing is lost. Everything streams into his words, so many tributaries feed into the flow of his poetry. His knowledge of chemistry, his work as a visual artist and jazz musician, his grounding in Chinese literature and Zen Buddhism--all of these combine to give his poems a tone and perspective unlike any other Mexican poet." 3 W.S Merwin concludes that, “Alberto Blanco’s poems, over several decades, have revealed with precision and delicacy an original imaginative landscape and imagery that are at once intimate, spacious, and rooted in the rich ground of Mexican poetry…” 4 “Alberto Blanco is the master of bright, clear, and sudden awarenesses that are the flesh and light so special to his poetry…” observes Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
.5
Describing Blanco’s work in A Cage of Transparent Words (2007), Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
writes:
This is a substantial volume, 140 pages of poems presented in both Spanish and English. It’s a selection of Blanco’s work from nine books and booklets, done by eight translators. Transparency “transparents” and questions (lyrics) of insubstantiality/reality are spun out on the foundational line “The birthright of being is suffering.” The first section is surreal prose poems, the rest are personal modern lyrics. It is all done with great sureness, making a surprising bridge from the inconclusive and mysterious to a dry and faintly whimsical patience. Somehow they help you get loose.6
Selected bibliography
Poetry Books Published in Mexico
Giros de faros, Colección Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1979. (Second Edition, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1985.)
El largo camino hacia ti, Cuadernos de Poesía, UNAM, Mexico, 1980.
Antes de nacer, Libros del Salmón, Editorial Penélope, Mexico, 1983.
Tras el rayo, Cuarto Menguante Editores, Guadalajara, 1985.
Cromos, Colección Tezontle, Fondo de Cultura Económica, INBA and SEP, Mexico, 1987.
Canto a la sombra de los animales, in collaboration with the Mexican artist Toledo, Galería López Quiroga, Mexico, 1988.
El libro de los pájaros, Ediciones Toledo, Mexico, 1990.
Materia prima, El Ala del Tigre, UNAM, Mexico, 1992.
Cuenta de los guías, Ediciones Era, Mexico, 1992.
Amanecer de los sentidos, a personal anthology, with an introduction by Alvaro Mutis, Lecturas Mexicanas, Third Series, Num. 79, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico, 1993.
El corazón del instante, a collection of twelve poetry books, Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1998.
Este silencio, a book of 68 haikus and 4 tankas, illustrated by Xavier Sagarra, Editorial Verdehalago, México, 1998.
Más de este silencio, a book of 40 haikus, illustrated by Susana Sierra, Ediciones del Ermitaño, México, 2001.
El libro de las piedras, Práctica Mortal, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico, 2003.
Medio cielo, with illustrations by Felipe Morales, Artes de México and Librería Grañén Porrúa, Mexico, 2004.
La hora y la neblina, second collection of twelve books of poetry:
Colección Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 2005.
Música de cámara instantánea, 52 poems dedicated to contemporary music composers, Cuadernos de Pauta, CONACULTA, Mexico, 2005.
Poetry Books Published in the United States and Other Countries
Dawn of the Senses, a bilingual poetry anthology including poems from nine books of poetry and some new poems, edited by Juvenal Acosta, and translated by W. S. Merwin, Edith Grossman, Eliot Weinberger, Julian Palley, John Oliver Simon, Mark Schafer, James Nolan, Jennifer Clement, Robert L. Jones, Joanne Saltz, Joseph Pitkin and Reginald Gibbons, City Lights, San Francisco, California, 1995.
El origen y la huella/The Origin and the Trace, images by Alberto Dilger, translation by Julian Palley, Circa, San Diego, 2000.
De vierkantswortel van de hemel, Gedichten, translation by Bart Vonck, Wagner & Van Santen, Holland, 2002.
Pequeñas historias de misterio, illustrated by Luis Mayo, Galería Estampa, Madrid, 2002.
A la lumière de la nuit / A la luz de la noche, illustrated with collages translated into French by Danièle Bonnefois, Manière Noire Editeur, Vernon, France, 2005.
A Cage of Transparent Words, a selection of poems by Alberto Blanco, a bilingual anthology with poems from nine of his books, edited by Paul B. Roth and translated into English by Judith Infante, Joan Lindgren, Elise Miller, Edgardo Moctezuma, Gustavo V. Segade, Anthony Seidman, John Oliver Simon and Kathleen Snodgrass, The Bitter Oleander Press, New York, 2007.
Feu nouveau / Fuego Nuevo, a bilingual poetry anthology, translation by Stéphane Chaumet, L'Oreille du Loup, Paris, 2009.
Emily Dickenson: 55 poemas, translation and prologue by Alberto Blanco, Poesía Hiperion, Madrid, 2010.