Latino Studies. Translation. Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler. In these short, pithy, subjective statements, the great Peruvian poet, author of THRILCE and THE BLACK HERALDS (both available from SPD) explores his own thinking and poetics at an extremely important moment in his career. "These are not aphorisms in the classical sense of the philosophic gemstones cut and polished to epigrammatic perfection," writes Stephen Kessler in the introduction, "They are more like thoughts-in-progress from the notebooks of a radical modernist poet trying to regain his bearings after a consciousness-shaking encounter with Soviet socialism...The dynamic tension between his own subjective, visionary poetics and a desire for solidarity with the masses energizes and haunts these writings."