The Child Poet

“Proust meets magical realism in this searching, lyrical memoir . . . In this soft-spoken account, [an] accident transforms Aridjis from boisterous lad to a bookish solitary who turns to poetry. It would not be a modernist Latin American literary work without at least a moment reminiscent of García Márquez, and there are many here, as when a suitor rejected by his aunt takes up the habit of sitting in the town square holding a protective umbrella, ‘though the sky was clear’ . . . A fine introduction to a writer who deserves to be better known to English-language readers.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The Child Poet recounts in prose a series of dreams that the poet experienced during his wife’s pregnancy with his first daughter . . . There is a beautiful symbolism in this book’s being translated by Aridjis’s daughter . . . Aridjis’s imagery is childlike in the best possible sense. It reflects the wonder of seeing things for the first time, the wonderment of dawning awareness, before ending with a sudden, declarative terseness that announces his arrival as a poet.”
—The Poetry Review

“This is writing that by the force of authenticity ultimately matters.”
—Cleaver Magazine

“Glorious.”
—Eileen Battersby, Irish Times (Best Books of 2016)

“Homero Aridjis believes his own poet’s life began after a gun injury in childhood. The injury created the poet yet he is proposing too that childhood is poetry, an accumulative first encounter with the stuff that the rest of the life will be working through.  The writing here is awesomely beautiful—rich, kinetic and even macabre . . . I’m aware throughout that this quick and lucid feeling translation is the product of Chloe Aridjis, the poet’s daughter. To be medium to the matter-of-fact privilege of a male child coming into his own in a man’s world, particularly when that child is your future illustrious dad brings a fantastic and even trans glow to this baroque and embodied tale of youth understanding in hindsight his future powers.”
—Eileen Myles, author

“Homero Aridjis’s poems open a door into the light.”
—Seamus Heaney