Jaime Sabines 1926-1999
A poet with an everlasting work, he used to sing to love and broken hearts as he celebrated loneliness and missed company as well. Jaime Sabines lived every day as it was "the first and the last of the world". He was a living legend and a real popular poet, and as Elena Poniatowska once remarked, "he took poetry to the streets". He was born in 1926 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas and after a long period of illness, he died last March 19th in Mexico City. Sabines belongs to that group of writers, those who by transforming reality, transform literature first. He was called "Sniper of Literature" by Fernández Retamar. His writing was just a testimony of the present never of a predetermine action. He was a human event who was in every place: the street, the school, the playground, the brothel, the hospital, the cinema and dwelling where life takes place at the same time as immodesty and surprising poetry, every hour of the day. Before he devoted himself to Literature studies, he spent three years studying Medicine, and moved on to his real vocation: Spanish Language and Literature, studying at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and obtained a postgraduate. Sabines was an outstanding student at the Mexican Writers Centre from 1964 to 1965 being part of the jury at the Casa de las Americas Award. Besides his literary activity, he participated in politics and became federal deputy for the state of Chiapas from 1976 to 1979 and for the Federal District in 1988. His poetry is a cry for attention warning about things hardly seen, which discovers and astonishes all inhabitants concerned at the same time and space, with the ability of communicating as for the first time. Jaime Sabines was rewarded with the Chiapas Award (1979), the Xavier Villaurrutia Award (1972), the Elias Sourasky Award (1982) and the National Literature Award (1983).
Bibliography
Mexican poet Jaime Sabines dead at 72
