Eduardo Lizalde

Eduardo Lizalde Chávez (born July 14, 1929, Mexico City), is a Mexican poet, academic and administrator.

Lizalde is known as "El Tigre" for recurring themes in his work which stem from his childhood fondness for the stories of Salgari and Kipling. As he explains: "The tiger has been a fascinating figure from Biblical times until now, and I don't believe there has ever been a writer who has never made a reference to tigers. The tiger is an image of death, destruction and, also, of beauty..."

His father, an engineer, taught him to read at an early age and introduced him to literature. He also began writing early and published his first short poems in 1948, at the age of eighteen, in the magazine El Universal. His first full book of poems, "La Mala Hora", was published when he was 27. While studying literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), he also attended night classes at the National Conservatory of Music.

In 1955, he became a member of the Communist Party of Mexico, but was expelled at the beginning of the 1960s, together with José Revueltas. He and Revueltas then founded the "Liga Leninista Espártaco", an alternative movement with which they both soon became disenchanted.

Shortly thereafter Lizalde, Enrique González Rojo and Marco Antonio Montes de Oca started Poeticísmo, a literary movement which quickly fizzled out. Lizalde himself severely criticzed the movement in his book Autobiografía de un Fracaso (Autobiography of a Failure), in which he said the movement's goal to create poetry with "originality, clarity and complexity" was so vague that, in reality, "there was nothing". In fact, despite his continuing efforts to promote Mexican literature, Lizalde has expressed dissatisfaction with his own work and poetry in general, of which he has frequently said "no sirve para nada" (it's useless).

He has served as the director of the Casa del Lago at UNAM and has held several positions at the Secretariat of Public Education. He is currently director of the José Vasconcelos Library and co-hosts Contrapunto, a weekday radio program from the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (IMER).

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