Along with Ramón López Velarde and Enrique González Martínez, José Juan Tablada is considered one of the three most influential Mexican poets of the early twentieth century. Tablada wrote in a time of political and literary transition, and change itself is a constant in his work. In The Siren and the Seashell (1991) Octavio Paz describes Tablada's eclectic poetry:

a little box of surprises, from which, in apparent disorder, come ostrich plumes, Modernist diamonds, Chinese ivories, little Aztec idols, Japanese prints, a sugar candy skull, a pack of fortuneteller's cards, . . . a chandelier, a recipe by the nuns of San Gerónimo for hawthorn conserves, Arjuna's bow, fragments of cities, of landscapes, of skies, of seas, of epics.

Each of these disparate images refers to one of the poet's varied interests, and their striking differences highlight the curiosity that Paz...