Manuel Maples Arce's 1920s avant-garde period is currently quite popular in Mexico, but his later poetry is largely unknown these days. Texts of his poetry were hard to find before the 1981 edition and 2013 reprint of his complete poetry, Las semillas del tiempo.

A few of his volumes have been translated into French: Poèmes Interdits by Edmond Vandercammen, and the three 1920s estridentista volumes as Stridentisme by Antoine Chareyre; one into English: Metropolis by John Dos Passos; and a few isolated 1920s poems here and there into English.

This bilingual edition, The Seeds of Time: Poetry of Manuel Maples Arce 1919-1980, translation and introduction by Diane J. Forbes, provides both the original texts in Spanish and the translation into English, to introduce Maples Arce to the English-language readership and to present the texts to bilingual Hispanist scholars and students working outside of Mexico.

A major goal is to have readers consider Maples Arce's complete poetry and not just his 1920s Estridentismo phase.

Forbes' companion book Maneuvering Time and Place: the Poetry of Manuel Maples Arce (Stockcero, 2022, ISBN 978-1-949938-17-3) is the first book to analyze the complete poetry as a whole, explaining themes, style and trajectory. Maples Arce is an important poet who deserves recognition as a major force in modern poetry.