PENGUIN CLASSICS

“SPAIN, TAKE THIS CHALICE FROM ME” AND OTHER POEMS

CÉSAR VALLEJO was born the youngest of eleven children in Peru in 1892. He published his first book of poems, Los heraldos negros, in 1919, and a second book, Trilce, in 1922, which is still considered to be one of the most avant-garde collections of poetry in the Spanish language. He spent the bulk of his life living in Europe, namely Paris, where he contributed to weeklies in France, Lima, Spain, and Italy. After becoming emotionally and intellectually involved in the Spanish Civil War, he had a final burst of poetic energy in the late 1930s, writing two books, Poemas Humanos and España, aparta de mí este cáliz, both of which were published posthumously. Vallejo died in dire poverty in Paris on April 15, 1938, of an unknown illness, now thought to have been a form of malaria.

 

MARGARET SAYERS PEDEN has translated over sixty books by such major Latin American authors as Isabel Allende, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz, and is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of Missouri.

 

ILAN STAVANS is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five-College 40th Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition (1995), The Riddle of Cantinflas (1997), The Essential Ilan Stavans (2000), On Borrowed Words (2001), Spanglish (2003), Dictionary Days (2005), The Disappearance (2006), and Love and Language (2007). He is the editor of, among other works, Growing Up Latino (1994), The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays (1997), and The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003). He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Latino Hall of Fame Award, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the Rubén Darío Medal, and the National Jewish Book Award. Stavans writes a newspaper column syndicated throughout the Spanish-speaking world.