Cisar 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 benefitted 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.
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is 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 it's own sense, revolutionary. Clayton Eshleman and José Rubia Barcia's translation of "The Complete Posthumous Poetry of César Vallejo" won the National Book Award for translation in 1979.