Collected Poems

Preface

Preface In the fall of 1960 I lived in the Colonia Ramos Millan, an outskirt of Mexico City. I had never felt as strong a connection between myself and a city. Nothing could move me from there. One day I saw Iztaccihuatl rising from luminous clouds more beautiful than light, and I wanted to climb it. I never did. Gradually I became homesick, smelling the leaves of the northeast, smelling an Autumn that wasn’t there. By that time I had written the Mexican poems that appear in the first section of this volume with the exception of “Pain Songs,” which was written in December 1960, in New York City, forgotten, lost, and rediscovered ten years later. A group of poems from 1965 completes this volume of Transmigration Solo. Whether I chose them for contrast or for similarity of mood, I don’t know, but I felt a brewing of diverse particles into the whole. J. C. 1978 ...