The Eternal Dice: Selected Poems

by César Vallejo, Margaret Jull Costa (translator)

One of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century, the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo now has a translator worthy of his genius


The Peruvian poet César Vallejo—one of Latin America’s most famous poets—was involved in various literary circles and began publishing his poems in 1914 in magazines, after discovering the works of Walt Whitman, the French symbolists, and the modernist Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario. He brought out his first book of poems in 1919, Los heraldos negros, and in 1922, he published his famous Trilce, which met a cool reception. Vallejo spent many years of his life in Europe—in Paris and Spain. Like many of the surrealists, he became a Marxist, and he was an ardent supporter of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. In his poems, Vallejo poignantly describes human misery, isolation, and anguish. As the translator Margaret Jull Costa “Vallejo edited and redrafted and honed his poetry. This is the only way in which he could describe the antithetical, paradoxical, oxymoronic universe he was living in, by using language at full tilt, making it perform all kinds of acrobatics. The resulting poems often defy interpretation…” This marvelous new bilingual selection of poems spanning his career up to his early death confirms Robert Hass’s assessment that Vallejo was “one of the essential poets of the twentieth century, a heartbreaking and groundbreaking writer.”

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

Published April 22, 2025

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Paige Ramsamy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Forgive me, lord: how little I have died!"

Poetry on grief, loss, family, politics and most importantly death.

Thank you to New Directions for sending us this ARC.

[Frida · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowkey traducción cuestionable

[Emily Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

get this man on wellbutrin

[Connor McMahon]

DNF regrettably. I just couldn’t get invested into his style of writing and didn’t find it engaging. I wanted to like it a lot because I love this era of Latin American writers, but alas

[Francescajemm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy wow these poems are wild. They are wild in the original Spanish and they remain wild in translation. Wildly linguistic, wildly emotional, and wildly inventive.