Eduardo Lizalde Chávez was a Mexican poet, academic, and administrator born in Mexico City on July 14, 1929. Lizalde earned the moniker “El Tigre” for recurring themes in his work that stemmed from his childhood love of Salgari and Kipling stories.
“From Biblical times to the present, the tiger has been a fascinating figure, and I don’t think there has ever been a writer who hasn’t made a reference to tigers,” he adds.
Shortly thereafter Lizalde, Enrique González Rojo, and Marco Antonio Montes de Oca started Poeticísmo, a literary movement that quickly fizzled out. Lizalde himself severely criticized the movement in his book Autobiografía de un Fracaso (Autobiography of a Failure), in which he said the movement’s goal was 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 the director of the José Vasconcelos Library and co-hosts Contrapunto, a weekday radio program from the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (IMER).
Eduardo Lizalde lived a quiet life, and as such, there is no information about his children, He was a private person.
