Cesar Vallejo is one the greatest poets of the twentieth century. His first publication, in his native Peru, was a book called "The Black Heralds", a fine collection of lyric poems in a largely symbolist style. This was followed by the book by which he is best known, "Trilce" (1922), which has become one of the monuments of the Hispanic 'vanguardia'. After "Trilce", now resident in Europe, Vallejo wrote stories, essays, a novel, and several plays, but did not collect any of his subsequent poems for book publication. Since his death, these poems have usually been referred to as the "Poemas humanos" after the title of one of the posthumous volumes. This Selected Poems draws on both of the volumes published by Shearsman Books in 2005: "Trilce" and the "Complete Later Poems 1923-1938", and adds to this selection a group of early poems from "The Black Heralds", thus giving an overview of the author's career and a sample of the whole range of his remarkable work. The translations are by the prize-winning Irish poet-translator, Michael Smith, and the Peruvian scholar, Valentino Gianuzzi.

Trilce is one of the greatest monuments of twentieth-century poetry, as important in Hispanic letters as The Waste Land and The Cantos in the Anglophone world. Full of neologisms and obscure symbols, the book remains just as radical in its experimentation with language as when it first appeared 100 years ago. This acclaimed translation by Irish poet Michael Smith and Peruvian scholar Valentino Gianuzzi is presented here in a centennial edition alongside the original Spanish. Aside from the canonical text, an appendix brings together the earlier versions of ten poems and an uncollected poem connected to the book. Also included is the preface to the first edition, here translated into English for the first time. This background material will allow the English reader to get a better grasp of the composition and initial reception of one of the key works of modern poetry.

This large volume brings together under one set of covers the three volumes published by Shearsman in 2005 and 2007: The Black Heralds and Other Early Poems, Trilce and The Complete Later Poems. Some minor errors have been corrected and one additional poem-recently rediscovered-has been added to the Early Poems section.

Before writing his breakthrough poem sequence 'Trilce', Cesar Vallejo published 'The Black Heralds', his first book of poems, in 1919. Although heavily indebted to the aesthetics of modernismo, Vallejo's early volume finds a way to escape the merely decorative, and includes poems of indubitable originality, harbingers of his later masterpieces. In this varied book, lyrics of existential angst and romantic frustration appear amid descriptions of family life and Andean landscapes. 'The Black Heralds' includes many of Vallejo's best-known poems, and its deceptive straightforwardness has garnered a lasting appeal among poetry readers. This bilingual edition presents a new translation of 'The Black Heralds', and is based upon the latest textual discoveries, such as variants in some copies of the first edition. Aside from the contents of his first book, an appendix gathers all of Vallejo's early uncollected poems, as well as those which only survive in fragments. Together with 'Trilce' and 'The Complete Later Poems 1923-1938', this volume makes available, for the first time in English, all of Cesar Vallejo's poetry. The new translations presented here are by the Irish poet, and award-winning translator, Michael Smith, and the Peruvian scholar Valentino Gianuzzi.

Cesar Vallejo is one the greatest Spanish-language poets of the 20th century, his monument being the book-length sequence "Trilce" (a translation of which is published simultaneously with this volume). After the publication of "Trilce", he published numerous essays and a didactic novel, but did not collect any of his subsequent poems for book publication. Since his death, these poems have usually been referred to as the Posthumous Poems or, collectively, as the "Poemas Humanos" after the title of one of the posthumous collections. This volume brings together all of the post-"Trilce" work that has been identified by the latest scholarship and included in the most recent Peruvian edition of the author's works. The Spanish texts have benefited from a number of corrections, as compared to previous publications, and the poems are presented chronologically - in so as far as the chronology can be ascertained. The book offers the most complete version yet of this magnificent body of work. The translations are by the award-winning Irish poet-translator, Michael Smith, and the Peruvian scholar Valentino Gianuzzi.