Eyes to See Otherwise

"Eyes To See Otherwise" is the first extensive selection of poems by leading Mexican poet Homero Aridjis to appear in English. The range and quality of the translations, by some of America's finest poets, mark the centrality of his work on the map of modern poetry. W.S. Merwin writes, "In his early books, it was immediately clear that Homero Aridjis was a poet of great vitality and originality ...[his] range grew with astonishing vigour in one book after another ...Poems of his have been published in English translation for decades but it is more than time to have a large, widely representative selection of his poems available in English". Charles Tomlinson recalls, "When I first met Homero Aridjis, he was a youthful poet. He has carried that sense of youth with him throughout his life and it has left a mark on all his work. Born in a Mexican village, near which the monarch butterflies swarm yearly after their flight from Canada, he experienced early life in a profound relationship with the cycles of nature. This lies at the root of his two principal concerns, poetry and ecology. He not only writes of the whale, but has long fought for the protection of its breeding places in Baja California". Kenneth Rexroth calls him "a visionary poet of lyrical bliss, crystalline concentrations and infinite spaces". He adds, "These are words for a new "Magic Flute"".