Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence
Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence / Homero Aridjis / New Directions Publishing, February 2023 - $19 (Paperback)
“Nuestros cuerpos “Our bodies
dos jaguares solares two solar jaguars
enfrentados en la noche faced off in the night
acabarán desgarrados end clawed up
en el alba total.” in the total dawn”
Homero de Aridjis’ Self Portrait in the Zone of Silence begins with “El Jaguar/ The Jaguar,” a powerful ode to the native Mexican symbol of strength and survival. The poem, composed of five parts, is a confrontation with death: the destruction of the jaguar provokes the reader to contend not only with the colonization of the Americas, but also with the poet’s own mortality. Aridjis, a native of Michoácan, Mexico, is renowned for his poetic legacy, as well as his environmental activism and his service as Mexican Ambassador, among other accomplishments. His new collection, forthcoming in February 2023, struck me as a culmination of this life’s work. The poems do not all explore environmental and national themes, but the encounters with the morbid and the ghostly are paired with distinctly Mexican images– between the volcano Popocatepetl and the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, Aridjis crosses the boundary of past and present in order to bring the land of the dead to that of the living.
While the poems are deeply Mexican, they are also intensely personal. The writer is very conscious of his influences, but the status of the book as a self portrait implies that the borders between Ardjis’ environment and self are fluid: he is as much himself as he is the jaguar and the mountain. In the last poem of the collection, “Autorretrato a los ochenta años/ Self Portrait at Age Eighty,” Aridjis reflects on mortality and the creative power of poetry in his life. For him, “being and making poetry are the same… Dust I shall be, but dust in love.” This embracement of death characterizes the collection as an intimate and moving journey to the beyond and unknowable, an exploration only accessible through the poet’s willingness to reach inside and bear himself forth.
--Gabrielle Pereira