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Where Words Like Monarchs Fly (Anvil $14.94)
In 1968, George McWhirter was asked by editor J. Michael Yates to make contact with a visiting Mexican poet at UBC. Being shy, McWhirter wrote a letter, even though José Emilio Pacheco's office was only a few hundred paces away. That year McWhirter translated three of Pacheco's poems for a Yates' anthology called Volvox. "When José Emilio departed homeward, my letters often vanished into the maw of Mexico City,"; he recalls. "Stamps would get torn off-they were often more valuable than pesos.";
McWhirter met Pacheco at the Hotel Geneve in Mexico City in 1975. "This huge man bustled into the lobby of the Hotel Geneve with books which he switched from hand to hand and brought close to his nose, like smelling salts to revive him. He apologized more than a Canadian, and when he ate, our children, Angela, and I watched in wonder at the speed of his spoon and the intake of soup. He said he was making up for 400 years of hunger. Pacheco said he had inherited the empty stomach of every Mexican that the Spanish had starved since 1500, but his craving for books was even greater.";
Ten years, a peso collapse and an earthquake later, McWhirter reunited with Pacheco for translations of Pacheco's Selected Poems. With the blossoming of a friendship, the Mexican invited the Canadian to meet his fellow poets such as Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican Christian of Palestinian extraction. Zaid had compiled an anthology of younger poets. They met in the lobby of the Hotel Reforma where splashes of water and little bird notes percolated through their greetings and introductions.
"A man in a brown, double-breasted business suit, whose voice was hard to separate from the fluting of the water, led Angela and I past the fountain,"; says McWhirter. "He had large hands, or very visible hands, which rose as though to conduct his words and fell when he stopped speaking. Over and over again, like books, the palms of both hands were opened to us.";
McWhirter liked Zaid's poetry and wanted to translate it. McWhirter sent a letter to other Mexican poets whose books he had read. He received a letter from Homero and Betty Aridjis, asking him to translate some of Homero's poems for the Latin American Book Fair in New York. (Homero's translator, Eliot Weinberger, had become the exclusive translator for Octavio Paz. Most of Mexico's poets are influenced by Octavio Paz, Mexico's best-known poet. McWhirter met frequently with Paz at his penthouse apartment on Calle Lerma when the McWhirters were living in Cuautla, Morelos, on a sabbatical year.)
George and Angela McWhirter first met New Yorker Betty Aridjis and Homero Aridjis-president of Grupo Cien, 'one hundred artists for the environment'-at their large home in Mexico City. "Homero sprinted down, shook hands, and talked to us rapidly,"; McWhirter recalls, "as if something elsewhere was about to call on him. Unlike José Emilio, he was unintimidated by his own size. He had no fear of crushing us in a mad Mexican murder of affection and solicitation when he embraced us and reached up to slap our backs. He became a commission of kind inquiry during dinner, so much so that Betty badgered him about remembering to eat. We glimpsed 400 years of roving impatience in the man. Son of a Greek father and Mexican mother, he quests the world and only rests in Mexico.";
Among the ten writers translated by various Canadian poets-Kate Braid, Karen Cooper, Caroline Davis Goodwin, Sylvia Dorling, Arthur Lipman, McWhirter, Raúl Peschiera and Iona Whishaw-McWhirter might have unwittingly crossed paths with one of the poets before.
In the 1970s the McWhirters visited the house in Coyoácan where Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick. The residence doubled as a private museum and was home to Verónica Volkow-Trotsky's great-granddaughter-who is one of the poets whose work appears in Where Words Like Monarchs Fly. In those days the family museum was tended with no government support, Verónica would have been the same age as the girl, an anonymous party member, who showed us the relics at the table where the ice pick found Trotsky bent over his studies. That house had survived raids and hails of bullets that still pock the walls, brick turrets and the iron door to the bedroom.";
Born in 1955, Veronica Volkow is the youngest of the ten poets in the anthology. With poets Elsa Cross and Elva MacÃas, she invited the McWhirters to the launch of a friend's book at the Franz Mayer Museum in Alameda. "Our first course at the soirée was a balalaika trio in the courtyard. A fine quintet of literary peers accompanied the poet's ten-minute reading with short critiques and memoirs. In the après-launch, Verónica introduced us to her mother and father-who was, someone whispered to us over drinks, Trotsky's grandson-the aristocracy of the left. Something we were lucky to learn, for until she had established her credentials as one of Mexico's best poets, Verónica allowed no mention of it.";
Other poets in Where Words Like Monarchs Fly: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Mexican Poets (1934-1955), a unilingual volume, are Carmen Boullosa, Victor Manuel Mendiola, Myriam Moscona and Francisco Hinojoso. 1-895636-18-3
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
McWhirter met Pacheco at the Hotel Geneve in Mexico City in 1975. "This huge man bustled into the lobby of the Hotel Geneve with books which he switched from hand to hand and brought close to his nose, like smelling salts to revive him. He apologized more than a Canadian, and when he ate, our children, Angela, and I watched in wonder at the speed of his spoon and the intake of soup. He said he was making up for 400 years of hunger. Pacheco said he had inherited the empty stomach of every Mexican that the Spanish had starved since 1500, but his craving for books was even greater.";
Ten years, a peso collapse and an earthquake later, McWhirter reunited with Pacheco for translations of Pacheco's Selected Poems. With the blossoming of a friendship, the Mexican invited the Canadian to meet his fellow poets such as Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican Christian of Palestinian extraction. Zaid had compiled an anthology of younger poets. They met in the lobby of the Hotel Reforma where splashes of water and little bird notes percolated through their greetings and introductions.
"A man in a brown, double-breasted business suit, whose voice was hard to separate from the fluting of the water, led Angela and I past the fountain,"; says McWhirter. "He had large hands, or very visible hands, which rose as though to conduct his words and fell when he stopped speaking. Over and over again, like books, the palms of both hands were opened to us.";
McWhirter liked Zaid's poetry and wanted to translate it. McWhirter sent a letter to other Mexican poets whose books he had read. He received a letter from Homero and Betty Aridjis, asking him to translate some of Homero's poems for the Latin American Book Fair in New York. (Homero's translator, Eliot Weinberger, had become the exclusive translator for Octavio Paz. Most of Mexico's poets are influenced by Octavio Paz, Mexico's best-known poet. McWhirter met frequently with Paz at his penthouse apartment on Calle Lerma when the McWhirters were living in Cuautla, Morelos, on a sabbatical year.)
George and Angela McWhirter first met New Yorker Betty Aridjis and Homero Aridjis-president of Grupo Cien, 'one hundred artists for the environment'-at their large home in Mexico City. "Homero sprinted down, shook hands, and talked to us rapidly,"; McWhirter recalls, "as if something elsewhere was about to call on him. Unlike José Emilio, he was unintimidated by his own size. He had no fear of crushing us in a mad Mexican murder of affection and solicitation when he embraced us and reached up to slap our backs. He became a commission of kind inquiry during dinner, so much so that Betty badgered him about remembering to eat. We glimpsed 400 years of roving impatience in the man. Son of a Greek father and Mexican mother, he quests the world and only rests in Mexico.";
Among the ten writers translated by various Canadian poets-Kate Braid, Karen Cooper, Caroline Davis Goodwin, Sylvia Dorling, Arthur Lipman, McWhirter, Raúl Peschiera and Iona Whishaw-McWhirter might have unwittingly crossed paths with one of the poets before.
In the 1970s the McWhirters visited the house in Coyoácan where Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice pick. The residence doubled as a private museum and was home to Verónica Volkow-Trotsky's great-granddaughter-who is one of the poets whose work appears in Where Words Like Monarchs Fly. In those days the family museum was tended with no government support, Verónica would have been the same age as the girl, an anonymous party member, who showed us the relics at the table where the ice pick found Trotsky bent over his studies. That house had survived raids and hails of bullets that still pock the walls, brick turrets and the iron door to the bedroom.";
Born in 1955, Veronica Volkow is the youngest of the ten poets in the anthology. With poets Elsa Cross and Elva MacÃas, she invited the McWhirters to the launch of a friend's book at the Franz Mayer Museum in Alameda. "Our first course at the soirée was a balalaika trio in the courtyard. A fine quintet of literary peers accompanied the poet's ten-minute reading with short critiques and memoirs. In the après-launch, Verónica introduced us to her mother and father-who was, someone whispered to us over drinks, Trotsky's grandson-the aristocracy of the left. Something we were lucky to learn, for until she had established her credentials as one of Mexico's best poets, Verónica allowed no mention of it.";
Other poets in Where Words Like Monarchs Fly: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Mexican Poets (1934-1955), a unilingual volume, are Carmen Boullosa, Victor Manuel Mendiola, Myriam Moscona and Francisco Hinojoso. 1-895636-18-3
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Submitted on July 9, 2003 in By David.
