Description:
Two opposing notes reconcile harmoniously in Elsa Cross: the complexity of her thought and the clarity of her diction.
Octavio Paz
Brief description: Elsa Cross (Mexico City, 1946) Poet, essayist, and translator. In Mexico, she has received the National Prize for Arts and Literature (2016), the International Alfonso Reyes Prize (2023), among many other awards both national and international. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from UNAM, where she is a full professor of Philosophy of Religion. She has also published books of essays, poetry translations and the extensive compilation El Lejano Oriente en la poesía mexicana (2022). Among her most recent poetry collections are Insomnio (2016), Nepantla (2019) and Isla Negra (2023).
Review Quotes:
The Bomarzo evoked in Cross' book resembles not so much a physical place as a kind of linguistic archipelago, often evoking a feeling reminiscent of Jaime Luis Huenún's Port Trakl. Bomarzo's surreal setting allows incongruous spatial and temporal references to overlap: a pre-Columbian archaeological site at Malinalco, Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the Cumaean Sibyl, Paul Celan, Paul Valéry, Gérard de Nerval, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Zach Anderson
Kenyon Review
Two opposing notes reconcile harmoniously in Elsa Cross: the complexity of her thought and the clarity of her diction.
Octavio Paz