Eyes to See Otherwise: Poetry

For the first time, a comprehensive Selected Poems in a bilingual edition, by Mexico’s greatest living poet. Eyes to See Otherwise is the first extensive selection of poems by leading Mexican poet Homero Aridjis to appear in English. The scope and quality of the translations, by some of America’s finest poets, mark the centrality of his work on the map of modern poetry. Aridjis’s sources range from Nahuatl chants and Huichol initiation songs to San Juan de la Cruz and the 16th-century Spanish poet Luis de Gangora y Argote. He is, in the words of translator George McWhirter, “a troubadour of love for lost environments, a voice in the wilderness of Mexico City and Mexico.” Included in this selection are poems by Aridjis evoking his own life, present and past, his memories always sticking close to his birthplace Contepec, where, on Altamirano Hill, the Monarch butterflies arrive each year. This long awaited Selected Poems enables the reader to witness, from his 1960 collection The Eyes of a Double Vision to new unpublished poemsin a bilingual editionthe poetic and personal evolution of this “visionary poet of lyrical bliss, crystalline concentrations and infinite spaces” (Kenneth Rexroth). Translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Martha Black Jordan, Philip Lamantia, W.S. Merwin, John Frederick Nims, Kenneth Rexroth, Jerome Rothenberg, Brian Swann, Barbara Szerlip, Nathaniel Tarn, Eliot Weinberger, and the editors.