Jose Emilio Pacheco died this year shortly before his 75th birthday which would have occurred today. The University of Guanajuato, along with universities in Mexico City, prepared a special tribute to this marvelous poet and novelist. The local event started with a short documentary about his life, then Guanajuato people were invited to read a favorite poem.
 |
| The news of Pacheco's death came through instantly on my cell phone. |
Many of Pacheco's poems are about animals, concrete instances of their cruel fate in a world dominated by humans. I picked a short poem called "Inmortalidad del Cangrejo" - The Immortality of the Crab - describing the fragility of the individual crab but still the species continues. After I read, the man behind me borrowed my book, choosing to read about the fate of an octopus that meets its death on a beach littered with plastic.
I moved to Mexico for many reasons but one push came from hearing a Mexican farm worker recite a long poem he knew by heart in front of an attentive audience in the Oregon countryside one Cinco de Mayo.
I found the poem I read in the Spanish quality paperback edition I bought in Mexico City of
Album de Zoologia,, a book of Pacheco's animal poems illustrated by the distinguished Oaxaca artist Francisco Toledo. Earlier the University of Texas Press published a bilingual edition.