Poet, essayist, and translator Ulalume González de León believed that "Everything has already been said," and, thus, that each act of creation is a rewriting, reshuffling, and reconstructing of one great work. For this reason, she chose the title Plagios (Plagiarisms) for her book of collected poems. Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz called Ulalume González de León "the best Mexicana poet since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," recognizing the visionary quality of her work. This first of three bilingual volumes presents several short collections of poems González de León produced from 1968 to 1971, each of which explores the ephemeral nature of identity and its dependence on the ever-shifting ground of language and memory.

Ulalume González de León (1928-2009) is the author of PLAGIOS/PLAGIARISMS, VOLUME ONE (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2020), translated by Terry Ehret, John Johnson, and Nancy J. Morales— the first full-length English translation of her work. Ulalume González de León was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, the daughter of two poets, Roberto Ibañez and Sara de Ibañez. She studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Mexico. While living in Mexico in 1948, Ulalume became a naturalized Mexican citizen. She married painter and architect Teodoro González de León, and together they had three children. She published essays, stories, and poems, and worked with Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz as an editor of two literary journals, Plural and Vuelta. She also translated the work of H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Lewis Carroll, and e.e. cummings. In the 1970's, González de León was part of a generation of Latin American women writers challenging the traditional definitions of women, marriage, and relationships. Her poetry earned her many awards, including the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, the Flower of Laura Poetry Prize in 1979 and Alfonso X Prize. Octavio Paz called Ulalume Gonzá lez de León "the best Mexicana poet since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," recognizing the visionary quality of her work. Ulalume González de León died in 2009 of complications of Alzheimer's.

"To read Ulalume González de León is to enter a feast of unspoken and spoken words, a carousel of emotions, and most of all to be submerged in her exquisite language. With poems that sense love and absences as well as those that explore both language and the poet's inner self, this bilingual collection, beautifully translated, presents the work of one of Latin America's most extraordinary poets." — Marjorie Agosín, author of The White Islands and Harbors of Light

"Ulalume González de León's poems are whimsical, paradoxical, and elegant. Octavio Paz described them as 'aerial geometry' with a 'lucid gaze.' 'The Wonderful Exercise of Waking,' the title of one of her poems, could be a description of the aim of her work: helping us learn to 'live alert.' Though González de León deserves a much wider audience, very little of her work has been available in this country until now. Plagios/Plagiarisms presents her poems in both the stunning original Spanish and in an excellent English translation." — Mary Crow, author of Addicted to the Horizon and translator of Roberto Juarroz, Vertical Poetry: Last Poems