The University of Arizona Press
The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters / Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos
Paperback ($18.00), Ebook ($18.00)
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Winner of the Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets
This award-winning bilingual collection intertwines the lives of a Renaissance painter and a modern migrant worker, offering a fresh perspective on art and migration.
In this highly imaginative work, the lives of the northern Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) and an imagined contemporary migrant worker named Juan Coyoc, later known as Juan Domínguez, run in parallel as they mirror each other across languages, time, and continents.
By comparing and at times intertwining these two poetic narratives, the book explores themes of art, migration, narco-violence, family, spirituality, and the idea that every human being represents all humanity at any moment in history. Both Hieronymus Bosch and Juan Domínguez become relatable and intimate figures, part of our own story.
Written in simple, sharp language, the book employs surprising imagery and a novel structure to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, while examining the intricacies of the human condition—from the life of Saint Anthony to the violent acts of narcos across Central America and the U.S.-Mexico border. With formal sophistication and philosophical depth, this work enriches the tradition of poetry about both migration and art, contributing to the literary heritage of Mexico and the United States over the past several decades.
This award-winning bilingual collection intertwines the lives of a Renaissance painter and a modern migrant worker, offering a fresh perspective on art and migration.
In this highly imaginative work, the lives of the northern Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) and an imagined contemporary migrant worker named Juan Coyoc, later known as Juan Domínguez, run in parallel as they mirror each other across languages, time, and continents.
By comparing and at times intertwining these two poetic narratives, the book explores themes of art, migration, narco-violence, family, spirituality, and the idea that every human being represents all humanity at any moment in history. Both Hieronymus Bosch and Juan Domínguez become relatable and intimate figures, part of our own story.
Written in simple, sharp language, the book employs surprising imagery and a novel structure to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, while examining the intricacies of the human condition—from the life of Saint Anthony to the violent acts of narcos across Central America and the U.S.-Mexico border. With formal sophistication and philosophical depth, this work enriches the tradition of poetry about both migration and art, contributing to the literary heritage of Mexico and the United States over the past several decades.
“The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters [is] an imaginative, earnest, and timely depiction of the casualties of mass migrations to the United States from Latin America. There is an intriguing parallel between two main characters, Juan Domínguez, migrant of fire, and Hieronymus Bosch, portraitist of fire, whose early lives are marked by catastrophic fire from which they are born into new names, new ways, new lives. Their labor is noticed, but their lives go unwatched except by the creatures of the night, the owls. [. . .] Beautiful! The translation achieves fluidity and transparency, a dynamic duo of qualities that make for an engaging experience.”—Giannina Braschi, author of Putinoika
“In this dual-language collection, Manuel Iris boldly mirrors the lives of painter Hieronymus Bosch and migrant worker Juan Coyoc, an exchange that reveals how violence lingers in body and memory across time. Iris writes of displacement and survival with an aching lyric clarity, exploring where personal history meets collective grief.”—José Angel Araguz, author of Rotura
“Every era feeds on times that have been lost in obscurity, until, say, a poem or a painting sheds light upon them and we discover again what links us to the people living in the past, like the ones who saw in their demons the very concrete terrors of today. This is the entanglement Manuel Iris reveals between the monsters of Hieronymus Bosch and the ones populating the world of our Juan Domínguez.”—Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
“Infused with erudition and formal rigor, The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters constitutes an innovative approach to think about migration and history through poetry and shows Manuel Iris as powerful witness and chronicler of the ways in which language, history, art, and memory continue to be central to our understanding of the human condition.”—Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis
“In this dual-language collection, Manuel Iris boldly mirrors the lives of painter Hieronymus Bosch and migrant worker Juan Coyoc, an exchange that reveals how violence lingers in body and memory across time. Iris writes of displacement and survival with an aching lyric clarity, exploring where personal history meets collective grief.”—José Angel Araguz, author of Rotura
“Every era feeds on times that have been lost in obscurity, until, say, a poem or a painting sheds light upon them and we discover again what links us to the people living in the past, like the ones who saw in their demons the very concrete terrors of today. This is the entanglement Manuel Iris reveals between the monsters of Hieronymus Bosch and the ones populating the world of our Juan Domínguez.”—Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
“Infused with erudition and formal rigor, The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters constitutes an innovative approach to think about migration and history through poetry and shows Manuel Iris as powerful witness and chronicler of the ways in which language, history, art, and memory continue to be central to our understanding of the human condition.”—Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis
124 Pages
7 x 9
Published: February 2026Paperback ISBN: 9780816556038
Published: February 2026Ebook ISBN: 9780816556045