The Poetry of César Vallejo
A look at the poems of César Vallejo.
César Vallejo's poems are intensely imaginative. They have an anguished power, a rebellious lexical energy, and a wild, free-wheeling emotionalism. Sympathy for the suffering of others is a deeply political current which runs through all his work. His lyrics are suffused with what Federico Garcia Lorca termed duende, a demonic inspiration that lifts the imagination to another plane in the presence of death. At times, one feels as if Vallejo has descended into the welter of the unconscious and returned bearing messages from this other world. Yet his own voice comes through as that of the most vulnerable, agonized, and compassionate of speakers—a witness urgently testifying to the experience of human pain