Poet, essayist, and translator Ulalume González de León believed that "Everything has already been said," and thus 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 González de León "the best Mexicana poet since Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," recognizing the visionary quality of her work. This second of three bilingual volumes presents several short collections of poems González de León produced from 1970 to 1975. Through her experimentation with unconventional syntax and borrowed texts, the poet skillfully blends anatomical, scientific, and philosophical vocabulary with richly erotic imagery to question our assumptions about identity and intimacy.
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.
"Reading the poems of Ulalume González de León may be compared to the experience of sitting under the big tent holding your breath, your eyes riveted on a tightrope walker high above you. Take in her deft hand at composition, efficiency of language, word sounds—-and all at once you are seeing through the poet's eyes. This volume of laudable translations will surely bring new readers to a twentieth-century poet for the ages." — Ana Castillo, author of My Book of the Dead and So Far from God
"In her geometrically precise, Escheresque poems, Ulalume González de León reconfigures habits of thought and perception with tenderness and empathy, navigating synchronous intimacies between the living and the dead, between the shadows that create us and the clarities that consume us. Line by line, the poems converge on untold journeys that migrate from soul to soul, even as they pollinate the imagination and escape the physics of love and time. They arrive where we dwell, one poem within the other, the birth of each surging as it breaks. What's more, the finely wrought, scrupulous translations chart the shifting realities, the cumulative mysteries, by doing what the poems do: They live and breathe, and invoke the untouchable language of silence." — William O’Daly, author of Yarrow and Smoke and translator of Pablo Neruda's Book of Twilight
"This second volume of Plagios/Plagiarisms contains an essential part of Ulalume González de León's literary project: a reworking of texts and themes that are masterfully crafted by the duende that Rosario Castellanos said characterizes Ulalume's work. Under the mask of the poet resides a feminine voice—full of wisdom, curiosity, and tenderness—whose echo is conveyed in luminous translations that expand the audience of the original Plagios." — Diego Alcázar Díaz, author of " 'Eternidades de imitación pasablemente diseñadas': tradición y apropiación en los Plagios de Ulalume González de León"
