Trilce

A highly-praised translation of a seminal work of Spanish literature is once again available.

Poetry. The 77 poems in James Wagner's TRILCE are homophonic translations of Cesar Vallejo's book of the same name, or at least that was the cathartic process Wagner underwent--in creating them, his versions take on a life of their own. "Titling his book TRILCE, James Wagner calls attention to the fact that he used the sound structure of Vallejo's poems as his matrix--a process that has sometimes been called homonymic (or surface) translation and that Wagner called "auralgraph" in his earlier book, the false sun recordings. It is a form at least as demanding as rhyme & meter and, at this point in history, more likely to generate interesting work. But, as with any form, all depends on what you do with it. James Wagner does a lot"--Rosmarie Waldrop.

"César Vallejo is the greatest Catholic poet since Dante—and by Catholic I mean universal."—Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain "An astonishing accomplishment. Eshleman's translation is writhing with energy."—Forrest Gander, author of Eye Against Eye "Vallejo has emerged for us as the greatest of the great South American poets—a crucial figure in the making of the total body of twentieth-century world poetry. In Clayton Eshleman's spectacular translation, now complete, this most tangled and most rewarding of poets comes at us full blast and no holds barred. A tribute to the power of the imagination as it manifests through language in a world where meaning has always to be fought for and, as here, retrieved against the odds."—Jerome Rothenberg, co-editor of Poems for the Millennium "Every great poet should be so lucky as to have a translator as gifted and heroic as Clayton Eshleman, who seems to have gotten inside Vallejo's poems and translated them from the inside out. The result is spectacular, or as one poem says, 'green and happy and dangerous.'"—Ron Padgett, translator of Complete Poems by Blaise Cendrars "César Vallejo was one of the essential poets of the twentieth century, a heartbreaking and groundbreaking writer, and this gathering of the many years of imaginative work by Clayton Eshleman is one of Vallejo's essential locations in the English tongue."—Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States "This is a crucially important translation of one of the poetic geniuses of the twentieth century." —William Rowe, author of Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life "Only the dauntless perseverance and the love with which the translator has dedicated so many years of his life to this task can explain why the English version conveys, in all its boldness and vigor, the unmistakable voice of César Vallejo."—Mario Vargas Llosa

This book seeks to re-vision the life and work of the Peruvian poet, César Vallejo (1892–1938). It consists of ten essays grouped into three complementary sections on Politics, Poetics and Affect. In Part I, William Rowe draws out the latent layers of political meaning in Vallejo’s ‘pre-political’ work, Trilce; Adam Feinstein weighs the evidence for and against the case that there was a rift between the two most important Latin American poets of the twentieth century (Vallejo and Pablo Neruda); and David Bellis compares and contrasts Vallejo’s Spanish Civil War poetry with that composed by Neruda and the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. In Part II, Dominic Moran provides a line-by-line dissection of Vallejo’s favourite poem of his early period, ‘El palco estrecho’; Adam Sharman offers a close reading of Poem XXIII of Trilce; Paloma Yannakakis looks at the role played by the human body in Vallejo’s poetics; while Michelle Clayton reviews the ways in which animals are represented in Vallejo’s poetry. In Part III, Santi Zegarra discusses the influence that Vallejo’s poetry has had on his film-making; Eduardo González Viaña reveals how he re-created Vallejo’s experience of imprisonment in his novel Vallejo en los infiernos; while Stephen Hart compares and contrasts the two main muses of Vallejo’s early poetry, his niece (Otilia Vallejo Gamboa) and the woman he met in Lima (Otilia Villanueva Pajares).