Although he is widely known for his prose works, Jorge Luis Borges began his literary career as a poet and called himself a poet. It is true that for a period he devoted himself to prose and essays, but as his blindness progressed, he returned to poetry, especially to traditional metered poetry: "Since I could no longer make drafts, I was forced to work from memory. And since, of course, one remembers verses more easily than prose, I much prefer a traditional poetic style to a free one. Metered verse is, in a way, portable. You can compose or edit a sonnet while walking or traveling, because meter and rhyme have the advantage of being memorizable."

He wrote hundreds of poems, built on completely different themes. Poems about battles, mythical or historical figures, mirrors, swords and hourglasses, often encompassing a world that sometimes extends and sometimes contradicts the imaginative structure of his prose. In his poems, he occasionally allows an emotion to slip through, something he avoids in his prose.