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 alongside the original Spanish. Aside from the canonical text, an appendix brings together the earlier versions of ten poems and an uncollected poem related 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.