Eyes to see otherwise : selected poems = Ojos, de otro mirar
Ojos de otro mirar
/ edited by Betty Ferber and George McWhirter ; translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti ... [et al]
- New York : New Directions , 2002.
- xxiv, 312 p. ; 21 cm.
Includes indexes.
New Directions continues its public service to literature with this lively introduction to contemporary Mexican poet-diplomat Homero Aridjis. Born in 1940 of Mexican-Greek ancestry, Aridjis begins this book as a somewhat sentimental surrealist, in poems that caught the attention of American poets from Philip Lamantia to W.S. Merwin and Kenneth Rexroth. His poetry eventually moves from lyrical declarations, such as "Knotted up, your cry of silence tells me nothing moss is also growing on my lips " to a more coherent if no less mystical succession of images: "he lifted up the fugitive water, held out the transparent stream, and saw the world on the other side." In between these two phases, translated here by various hands including the above poets and editor McWhirter, Aridjis has an unfortunate brush with the same translatorese that has made it difficult for readers of English to understand the verse of Octavio Paz.