ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicomedes Suarez Arauz is a poet, literary and art theorist, and an editor. Born in Bolivia in 1946, he studied in Argentina, England, and the United States and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. He has published four volumes of poetry including Los escribanos de Loen (The scribes of Loen) and Cartas a la amnesia (Letters to the Amnesia). In 1977 he won the Premio Edicion Franz Tamayo for poetry in Bolivia. His booklength poem El Poema America was translated into English and published in 1976. In the English-speaking world his work has been represented in Giant Talk; An Anthology of Third World Writers (Random House, 1975), The Immanent Anthology (Smith-Horizon Press, 1973), For Neruda/ For Chile (Beacon Press, 1975) and From the Hudson to the World (Clearwater Sloop Press, 1975).In the present book, as in The America Poem (written in 1971 under thirteen different pseudonyms), The Scribes of Loen, and Letters to Amnesia, Nicomedes Suarez Arauz is present in diverse guises, underscoring the idea of the dissolution of individuality and authorship, a notion suggested by amnesia as a creative metaphor and also practiced by Jean-Jacques Passera. In Amnesis: The Art of the Lost Object, Suarez-Arauz participates as a painter, poet, art theorist and critic, and designer of a park.Presently, Suarez Arauz teaches at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is writing a book entitled The Intrahistory of the Universe: Amnesia as a Metaphor Throughout World Cultures.