Trilce (Sheep meadow poetry) [Paperback]

Cesar Vallejo (Author), Stanley Moss (Editor), Rebecca Seiferle (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Sheep meadow poetry | Publication Date: December 1, 1992

"Trilce", originally published in Spanish in 1922, was the last collection of poetry to be published in Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo's lifetime. He identified himself with Peruvian landscape and experience, and attempts throughout this book to elude European forms and return to the Inca culture and language. The translator of this bilingual edition is herself a New Mexican poet whose style is uniquely suited to the hazards of translation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Vallejo's poetry combines excruciatingly personal emotions with imagery that at first appears facetious but turns out to be wordplay with a larger purpose. "Hot bakery of my former biscuits, / pure egg yolk childlike innumerable, mother," begins one of many poems that mourn his mother's death; but it is himself he ends up lamenting, since "everyone keeps charging us / the rent for the world where you left us / and the value of this everlasting bread." The 77 poems reflect upon the poet's dual Spanish and Peruvian Indian heritage in a dialect that mocks Spanish grammar with Incan idioms, plays on the similarities between words and tosses in medical terms (Vallejo attended medical school) to enhance the surreal effect. Seiferle's insightful introduction and footnotes serve as necessary maps to the book's political context--Vallejo's assertion of the Incan side of his identity--and intellectual strengths. The sensitive translation of an extremely difficult text in this bilingual edition commemorates the centennial of Vallejo's birth and the 70th anniversary of the book's original publication; ironically, it also coincides with the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Vallejo was born 100 years ago in a small mining town in north central Peru. Both his grandfathers were Spanish priests. His poetry has come to be highly regarded, and this last volume to be translated into English is considered his most difficult. In fact, when it came out in 1922, the critics were so hostile that soon afterward Vallejo left Peru permanently for Paris. Neither as romantic nor as bohemian as he had been in much of his poetry, Vallejo was here straining Spanish syntax, resorting to technical jargon and distorting typography, hyphenation, and punctuation to convey the harshness of a wide range of unsatisfied or unsatisfying thoughts touching on sexuality, loneliness, and death: "Death on its knees pours forth/ its white blood that is not blood." Vallejo has been translated by the likes of James Wright, Thomas Merton, and Robert Bly, so Seiferle's renderings have a lot to live up to. Her edition would have been improved by a glossary of Vallejo's many ambiguous terms; in fact, there are an alarming number of lexical discrepancies. Appropriate for strong poetry and Latin American collections.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 171 pages
• Publisher: Sheep Meadow; Bilingual Spanish-English ed. edition (December 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878818120
• ISBN-13: 978-1878818126
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,545,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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