ISBN: 0292765479 9780292765474

Category: Poetry / General

Page count: 147

If a picture paints a thousand words, a poem can evoke a thousand images. In this illustrated, bilingual volume of poetry, two of Mexico's most prominent artists, poet and painter, join their words and images of animals to create a work of startling insight and beauty. Jose Emilio Pacheco, the most talented poet of his generation, often writes poems in which animals act as his alter ego, conveying his perceptions of the human condition. His Album de zoologia, of which this is the English version, gives voice to myriad creatures who inhabit land, sea, air, and even (mythically) fire. Through their perceptions, the poet challenges much of what is dark in the human psyche--cruelty toward ourselves and other life forms, destruction of the fragile world that all living creatures share. Francisco Toledo, acknowledged as Mexico's foremost painter, also creates ceramics, tapestries, graphics, frescoes, and sculpture. His art is erotic, exuberant, and vital--rich with figures from nature, no few of which are drawn from the millenary Zapotec culture of his forebears. In An Ark for the Next Millennium, Toledo's arresting black-and-white drawings are the visual expression of Pacheco's wise, foolish, besieged, threatening, and threatened animals--our brothers and sisters on this imperiled planet.