Clayton - Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity

Csar Vallejo and Lyric Modernity

Michelle Clayton

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley . Los Angeles . London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2011 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clayton, Michelle, 1974
Poetry in pieces : Csar Vallejo and lyric modernity /
Michelle Clayton.
p. cm.(FlashPoints ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-26229-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Vallejo, Csar, 1892-1938Criticism and
interpretation. I. Title.
PQ8497.V35Z616 2011
861'.62dc22

2010020042

Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the FlashPoints editorial committee at the University of California Press and to the Modern Language Initiative, for their support of this book. I have had the extraordinary luck to work with an extraordinary editor, Ed Dimendberg, whose wit, good sense, and German references kept me lively and often laughing during the final stages of revision. Hannah Love, Lynne Withey, and Emily Park have been very helpful through the editorial phase, as has my copy editor, Sheila Berg, who has patiently removed many Irishisms; any remaining are the product of my own stubbornness. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the two manuscript reviewers, Christina Karageorgou-Bastea and Gwen Kirkpatrick, both fine readers of Spanish-language poetry, who gave me enormously useful suggestions for local and conceptual revisions. I am also grateful for comments from other anonymous readers who helped me to fine-tune certain points of the argument.

This book is the product of many conversations. Not all of them had to do with Vallejo, but they all helped to trace out the broad contours of this book, reminding me constantly of the need to read widely and with an openness to unexpected connections. My most immediate debt is to my wonderful adviser at Princeton, Jim Irby, who first introduced me to Vallejo's poetry; Jim's rigor as a critic and his encouragement and patience as a mentor through and beyond my graduate years have given me a model not only for poetry criticism but for academic generosity as well. Many other faculty members at Princeton gave depth and breadth to my thinking about poetry's forms, contents, and contexts: Arcadio Daz-Quiones, Ricardo Piglia, Luca Melgar, Ricardo Krauel, Michael Wood, Eduardo Cadava, and Doug Mao. Behind them are a line of teachers who introduced me to poetry and the pleasures of Latin American literature: Charmian Arbuckle and Hilda Quinn in Ireland and Clive Griffin, Robin Fiddian, and David Constantine at Oxford.

In my professional life at UCLA I have had the support of a lovely community of scholars. Colleagues in my two home departments, Comparative Literature and Spanish & Portuguese, in English, and across the city in departments at the University of Southern California, helped to keep this project in motion, through timely encouragement or suggestions for further reading and thought. My special thanks go to a number of colleagues whose support went above and beyond the call of duty: Ali Behdad, Veronica Cortnez, Marzena Grzegorczyk, Michael Heim, Roberta Johnson, Kathy Komar, Katherine King, Efran Kristal, Beth Marchant, Mark Seltzer, Ross Shideler, Shu-mei Shih, and Andrs Soria Olmedo. Staff members at UCLAin Rolfe, Royce, and Humanitiesprovided practical support for various aspects of my research. Whatever freshness this book has is also due to the undergraduate and graduate students at UCLA who have struggled with Vallejo alongside me, energetically disproving a colleague's early warning that Vallejo depresses the students. And this project also owes much to the quickwitted capabilities of research assistants at various moments in my writing: Vanessa Fernndez, Peter Lehman, and Romn Lujn.

I have presented sections of this book to audiences at a variety of universities and conferences; I thank those audiences for suggestions about how to frame Vallejo for different groups and for steering me in the direction of some unsuspected connections. Conferences have always reenergized my take on Vallejo, largely through surprising conversations with colleagues in close or distant fields. For keeping me aware of the possibilities and excitements of cross-cultural poetics, I thank Chris Bush, Eric Hayot, John Marx, Barrett Watten, and Steve Yao. Within Latin American studies, I have found some remarkable models and interlocutors in Jorge Coronado, Robert Kaufman, Justin Read, Fernando Rosenberg, Gonzalo Aguilar and, right at the finish line, Anna Deeny. Gene Bell-Villada, Jos Antonio Mazzotti, Guido Podest, and Dan Balderston have been supporters of the project from its earliest days; the latter two have also pulled me onto different and fruitful critical tracks at opportune times. Jean Franco and Julio Ortega generously read sections of this book while it was in preparation, as .

Various institutions provided funding for my research in libraries in the United States and abroad. The Princeton Program in Latin American Studies helped me get the project off the ground, supplemented later by several UCLA Senate Research Enabling Grants and by a UCLA Latin American Institute Faculty Fellowship during my sabbatical leave. Jorge Puccinelli, Jos Antonio Rodrguez Garrido, Fernando Velzquez, and Victor Vich showed me great intellectual generosity and hospitality in Lima, as did Jorge Fondebrider, Florencia Garramuo, and Alvaro Fernndez-Bravo in Buenos Aires.