Author Description

Day and night, life and death are sometimes seen as opposites of each other. But they can also be understood as falling in a continuum, one containing the other. In this wonderful pair of poems by noted Argentine/Mexican poet Jorge Elías Luján, both ideas are expressed. An Apple in the Apple Orchard describes a young boy and girl in the early morning playing a sort of hide-and-seek amongst the apple trees. Pale As Bone takes the same children on a carousel ride where a Lady-as-Pale-as-a-Bone is trying to choose whom to take with her. Manuel Monroy, a very talented young Mexican illustrator, sets both scenes in a magic garden in which the poems are like a kind of dance between and among the elements that constitute human experience. The poetry, which is wonderful to read aloud, can be understood at its most literal level and at deeper levels with great pleasure. But no matter how it is read and understood, this evocative, mysterious book will be enjoyed.