Joaquín Font, El Reposo Mental Health Clinic, Camino Desierto de los Leones, on the outskirts of Mexico City DF, March 1979. One day a strange man came to visit me. That's what I remember about the year 1978. I didn't get many visitors, just my daughter and a woman and another girl who said she was my daughter too, and who was remarkably pretty. This man had never been to see me before. I received him in the yard, facing north. Even though all the lunatics face south or west, I was facing north and that was how I received him. The stranger said good morning, Quim, how are you today? And I answered that I was the same as I'd been yesterday and the day before and then I asked him whether the architecture studio where I used to work had sent him, since the way he looked or talked was vaguely familiar to me. Then the stranger laughed and said how can you not remember me, man, can you possibly be serious? And I laughed too, to put him at ease, and I said yes, of course, my question was perfectly sincere. And then the stranger said I'm Damián, your friend Álvaro Damián. And then he said: we've known each other for years, man, how can this be? And to relax him, or so he wouldn't be sad, I said yes, now I remember. And he smiled (although his eyes didn't look happy) and he said that's better, Quim, it was as if he'd adopted the voice and concerns of my doctors and nurses. And when he left I guess I forgot him, because a month later he came back and he said I've been here before, I remember this asylum, the urinals are over there, this yard faces north. And the next month he said to me: I've been visiting you for more than two years, man, can't you try just a little harder to remember me? So I made an effort and the next time he came I said how are you, Mr. Álvaro Damián, and he smiled but his eyes were still sad, as if he were seeing everything from the vantage point of a great sorrow.

Jacinto Requena, Café Quito, Calle Bucareli, Mexico City DF, March 1979. It was really strange. I know it's just a coincidence, but sometimes these things make you think. When I told Rafael about it, he said it was all in my head. I said: have you realized, now that Ulises and Arturo don't live in Mexico anymore, there seem to be more poets? What do you mean more poets? said Rafael. Poets our age, I said, poets born in 1954, 1955, 1956. How do you know that? said Rafael. Well, I said, I get around, I read magazines, I go to poetry readings, I read book reviews, sometimes I even listen to reviews on the radio. And how do you make time for so many things now that you have a kid? said Rafael. Franz loves to listen to the radio, I said. I turn on the radio and he falls asleep. Are they reading poetry on the radio? said Rafael. He was surprised. Yes, I said. There's poetry on the radio and in magazines. It's like an explosion. And every day a new publishing house pops up that publishes new poets. And all of this right after Ulises left. Strange, isn't it? It doesn't seem strange to me at all, said Rafael. A sudden blossoming, the flowering of a hundred schools for no good reason, I said, and it just happens to be when Ulises is gone. Doesn't it seem like too much of a coincidence to you? Most of them are terrible poets, said Rafael, suck-ups to Paz, Efraín, Josemilio, and the peasant poets, complete garbage. I'm not saying that they aren't, I said, or that they are. It's the number of them that bothers me, the appearance of so many of them, and so suddenly. There's even some guy who's putting together an anthology of all the poets in Mexico. Yes, said Rafael, I already knew that. (I already knew he knew.) And he isn't going to include any of my poems, said Rafael. How do you know? I asked. A friend told me so, said Rafael, the guy doesn't want anything to do with the visceral realists. Then I said that what he'd said wasn't entirely true, because even if the asshole who was putting together the anthology had excluded Ulises Lima, he hadn't excluded María and Angélica Font or Ernesto San Epifanio or me. He does want poems from us, I said. Rafael didn't answer. We were walking along Misterios, and Rafael gazed toward the horizon, as if he could actually see it, although where it would have been there were houses, clouds of smoke, the afternoon haze of Mexico City. So are all of you going to be in the anthology? said Rafael after a long silence. I don't know about María and Angélica, I said, it's been a long time since I've seen them. Ernesto almost definitely will be. And I definitely won't be. So why won't you…? said Rafael, but I didn't let him finish the question. Because I'm a visceral realist, I said, and if that asshole won't take Ulises, he's not getting me either.

Luis Sebastián Rosado, a dark office, Colonia Coyoacán, Mexico City DF, March 1979. Yes, it's an odd phenomenon, but its causes are very different from those put forward just a bit naïvely by Jacinto Requena. There really was a demographic explosion of poets in Mexico. This became clear beginning, say, in January 1977. Or January 1976. It's impossible to put an exact date on it. Among the various contributing factors, the most obvious are the country's more or less steady economic growth (from 1960 to the present day), the consolidation of the middle class, and an increasingly well-structured university, especially in the humanities.

Let's take a closer look at this new horde of poets, of which I'm a part, agewise at least. The great majority are students. A large percentage published their first poems in magazines associated with the university or the Ministry of Education, and their first books with university-affiliated publishing houses. A large percentage have also mastered (in a manner of speaking) a second language in addition to Spanish-usually English, or to a lesser extent French-and translate poets writing in those languages, nor is there any shortage of fledgling translators from the Italian, the Portuguese, or the German. Some combine work as amateur editors with their poetic endeavors, which in turn leads to the proliferation of various often valuable projects of an editorial nature. There are probably more young poets in Mexico now than there've ever been. Does this mean that poets under thirty today, say, are better than those who occupied that age bracket in the sixties? May we conceivably discover the equals of Becerra, José Emilio Pacheco, or Homero Aridjis among some of our most rabidly contemporary poets? That remains to be seen.

And yet Ismael Humberto Zarco's project strikes me as perfect. It was about time to bring out an anthology of young Mexican poets with the same high standards as Monsiváis's La poesía mexicana del siglo XX, memorable in so many ways! Or like Poesía en movimiento, the exemplary and paradigmatic work undertaken by Octavio Paz, Alí Chumacero, José Emilio Pacheco, and Homero Aridjis. I must admit that in a certain sense I felt flattered when Ismael Humberto Zarco called me at home and said: Luis Sebastián, I need your advice. Of course, advice or not, I knew for a fact that I was already included in the anthology, as a matter of course, you might say (the only thing I didn't know was how many of my poems would be selected), as were my friends, so my visit chez Zarco was initially only in an advisory capacity, in the event that some detail had escaped Zarco, meaning in this particular case some magazine, some publication from the provinces, a name or two that the totalizing zeal of the Zarconian endeavor couldn't permit itself the luxury of overlooking.

But in the scant three days between Ismael Humberto's call and my visit, I happened to learn the number of poets the anthologist planned to include, an excessive number no matter how you looked at it, democratic but hardly realistic, remarkable as an experiment but mediocre as a crucible of poetry. And the devil tempted me, putting ideas in my head during the days between Zarco's call and our meeting, as if the wait (but what wait, my God?) were the Desert and my visit the instant when one opens one's eyes and sees one's Savior. And for those three days I was tortured by doubts. Or Doubts. But it was a torture, this I saw clearly, that brought satisfaction as well as suffering and doubt (or Doubt), as if the flames were a simultaneous source of pain and pleasure.