Cesar Vallejo

'The Universal Poet'

His poems are forever in my heart. He was Peruvian (March 16, 1892 - April 15, 1938)

So under appreciated in its own land, but glorified in the rest of the world.

Although during his lifetime he published only three books of poetry, he is nonetheless considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and, in its own sense, revolutionary.

Five talking points about Cesar Vallejo.

1) There's the inexplicable mystery of how and why he realized that he could be Cesar Vallejo. That is, speak with such an unmistakably individual voice. What gave him that courage? (Normally I hate to apply the word courage to writing in a particular style; it seems fake and inappropriate to say that it is courageous for me to write in a particular way. For Vallejo, though, this is entirely approrpriate.)

2) He had a complete poetic language, ranging from the colloquial to the erudite, the Quechua-inflected Spanish that he grew up speaking to the avant-garde cosmopolitan discourse of Europe.

3) He had a unique way of bridging the individual and the collective voice. "Yo no siento este dolor como Cesar Vallejo." Yet it took "Cesar Vallejo" to articulate this insight.

4) He passed through the historical avant-gardes and forged a style of political poetry totally inflected by the freedom given to him by this avant-garde. He never practiced a sort of "generic" avant-garde style. . .

5) His appeal is immediate and direct. You know that it's great before you even understand what it's all about. Further study only deepens our appreciation.

(from nobloodforhubris.blogspot.com)

Cesar Vallejo Tribute
Mariela Dreyfus reads "Quedeme a Calentar la Tinta en que me Ahogo" while Anne Waldman reads the translation, "I Stayed on to Warm Up the Ink in which I Drown"

Translation: "I Stayed on to Warm Up the Ink in which I Drown"

I stayed on to warm up the ink in which I drown
and to listen to my alternative cavern,
tactile nights, abstracted days.

The unknown shuddered in my tonsil
and I creaked from an annual melancholy,
solar nights, lunar nights, Parisian sunsets.

And still, this very day, at dusk,
I digest the most sacred certainties,
maternal nights, great-granddaughter days,
bicolored, voluptuous, urgent, lovely.

And yet
I arrive, I reach myself in a two-seated plane
under the domestic morning and the mist
which emerged eternally from an instant.

And still,
even now,
at the tail of the comet in which I have earned
my happy and doctoral bacillus,
behold that warm, listener, male earth, sun and male moon,
incognito I cross the cemetery,
head off to the left, splitting
the grass with a pair of hendecasyllables,
tombal years, infinite liters,
ink, pen, bricks and forgiveness.