obituary

Carlos Fuentes who passed away last week at the age of 83 left behind a multifaceted legacy that most writers can only dream of. Up until the very day he died, he was an active, larger-than-life presence in the literary, political, social and intellectual life of his native México, and one imagines his influence will still be felt long after the memory of him as a flesh and blood human being is gone.

He was lionized in his own country, but his influence on the literary environment in this one should not be underestimated. It was Fuentes, along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar, who, sometime around 1975, shouldered their way up to that big table in the back of Elaine’s and demanded to be seated.

She was born in England to American parents and was an international star by the time she was a teenager.

She entranced people all over the world with her beauty – especially with those incredible violet eyes.  Yet she never really thought of herself as a great beauty and said that Ava Gardner truly deserved that title.

When it comes to certain celebrated people, we find ourselves mulling over appropriate adjectives to describe them.

Exceptional. Courageous. Talented. Strong. Unique. Beautiful.

All of these words can be used to describe Lena Horne. We lost her last week. She was 92 years old.

Lucille Clifton wrote as close to the bone as a poet can. She cut away much punctuation, all ornament and everything else that was superfluous to the task at hand. Her poems often had the rhythm of speech, but it was speech as one wishes speech could be.