Figures & Figurations (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Paz, Marie José; Paz, Octavio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811217590 ISBN 13: 9780811217590

Publisher: New Directions, 2008

Synopsis

A beautiful gift edition of Figures & Figurations: the collaboration between the Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz and his wife of thirty years, the artist Marie José Paz.

Figures & Figurations, one of the last works completed by the great late Mexican poet Octavio Paz before his death in 1998, is a stunning collaborative project with his wife, the acclaimed artist Marie José 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. In addition to the gorgeous full-color art, this bilingual edition features Eliot Weinberger's excellent translations, as well as an essay by Octavio Paz on Marie José 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 the linguist Roman Jakobson and Elizabeth Bishop. "These objects sometimes surprise us," he writes, "and sometimes make us dream or laugh (humor is one of the poles of her work). Signs that invite us on a motionless voyage of fantasy, bridges to the indefinitely small or galactic distances, windows that open on a nowhere. Marie José's art is a dialog between here and there." An illuminating afterword by the eminent French poet Yves Bonnefoy completes this edition.

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.

Review:

An imagination not afraid to be extravagant is Paz's appeal, his provocation. -- Calvin Bedient

An aesthetic and visually provocative collection of 12 of Paz's poetic constructions. -- Patrick L. O'Connell (06/01/2003)

Poems of magnitude reaching to us in their smallness...we are the faces that Marie Jose Paz constructs... -- Harriet Zinnes

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

An elegant fusion of art and poetry. Both the poetry and artwork have striking affinities, enhancing our appreciation and understanding. -- Charles Guenther (04/30/2003)

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0811217590
• ISBN 13: 9780811217590
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64