Figures & Figurations - Hardcover

Paz, Marie José; Paz, Octavio; Weinberger, Eliot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811215245 ISBN 13: 9780811215244

Publisher: New Directions, 2002

Synopsis

A beautiful collaboration between husband and wife. His poems to her collages, call and response from Mexico's greatest poet. "Marie Jose's constructions and boxes are three-dimensional objects transfigured by her imagination and her sensibility into visual ideas, mental enigmas, bearers of bizarre and disturbing images, or of ironic perceptions. More than things to be seen, they are wings for traveling, sails for wandering and wondering, mirrors through which to cross." Octavio Paz Figures & Figurations, one of the last books completed by the late Mexican poet Octavio Paz before his death in 1998, is a collaborative effort with his wife of thirty years, the artist Marie Jose Paz. In response to ten of her collage-constructions, he wrote ten new short poems; she in turn created two new artworks in response to two of his earlier poems. Twelve poems, twelve pieces of art reproduced in full color, in a book first published in Spanish in 1999 and now appearing in a bilingual edition. In addition to the poems and collage-constructions, Figures & Figurations includes an essay by Octavio Paz on Marie Jose Paz's work, "The Whitecaps of Time," in which he relates how her friendship with Joseph Cornell became a stimulus for her assemblages and how she was further spurred on by other friends, such as Roman Jakobson and Elizabeth Bishop. "These objects sometime surprise us," he writes, "sometimes make us laugh or dream. Signs that invite us to a motionless voyage of fantasy, bridges to the infinitely small or galactic distances, windows that open on to nowhere. The art of Marie Jose is a dialogue between here and there."

About this title

About the Author

Marie José Paz began working as an artist in 1972, encouraged by artists like Joseph Cornell, Mark Strand and Robert Gardner. She was Octavio Paz's loving companion for more than thirty years.

Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City. He wrote many volumes of poetry, as well as a prolific body of remarkable works of nonfiction on subjects as varied as poetics, literary and art criticism, politics, culture, and Mexican history. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1977, the Cervantes Prize in 1981, and the Neustadt Prize in 1982. He received the German Peace Prize for his political work, and finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

Eliot Weinberger is an essayist, editor, and translator. He lives in New York City.

Eliot Weinberger is an essayist, editor, and translator. He lives in New York City.

Review

An aesthetic and visually provocative collection of 12 of Paz's poetic constructions. -- Multicultural Review, Patrick L. O'Connell, 1 June 2003

An elegant fusion of art and poetry. Both the poetry and artwork have striking affinities, enhancing our appreciation and understanding. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Charles Guenther, 30 April 2003

An imagination not afraid to be extravagant is Paz's appeal, his provocation. -- Calvin Bedient, The New York Times Book Review

Marie Jose Paz began creating amazing, boxed assemblages. Octavio Paz wrote these beautiful poems inspired by his wife's art constructions. -- Jeri Lynn Crippen, Lovin' Life, Phoenix, AZ, February 2004

Poems of magnitude reaching to us in their smallness...we are the faces that Marie José Paz constructs... -- Rain Taxi, Harriet Zinnes, Spring 2003

The reader will long to put these pages on permanent display in the galleries of the mind. -- Steven F. White, World Literature Today, 1 December 2003

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0811215245
• ISBN 13: 9780811215244
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 64