Figures & figurations

"Figures & Figurations, one of the last books completed by the late Mexican poet and Nobel Prize laureate 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.

First published in Spain in 1991, this book of twelve poems and twelve pieces of art in full color now appears in English for the first time, in a bilingual edition translated by Eliot Weinberger.

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."--BOOK JACKET.