Max Rojas is considered in Mexico to be a true poet’s poet, in addition to being a recognized essayist, literary critic, and novelist. Rojas was born in 1940 in Mexico City and studied philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. At eighteen, Rojas joined the Communist Party, beginning a lifelong commitment to the labor movement. He also served as director of the Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky from 1994 to 1998. In 1971 he financed his first book of poetry, El turno del aullante, in a print run of 100 copies, later republished in 1983. In 1986, he published his second book of poems, Ser en la sombra, before falling silent for over twenty years. He re-emerged in the late 2000s with the first installments of Cuerpos. Rojas’s poetry was relatively unknown throughout most of his life, though his early writings were popular with members of the Infrarealist group, including Roberto Bolaño and Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. After Cuerpos received the Carlos Pellicer Iberoamerican Prize in Poetry in 2009, his singular style attained some notoriety, making him a more influential figure in contemporary Mexican poetry. Rojas died in 2015 at the age of 74.