The cover of this issue of LALT is dedicated to Peruvian poet Mario Montalbetti (El Callao, 1952). The corresponding feature is guest-edited by Ecuadorian researcher Victor Vimos. No one is better suited for the task than this friend of the magazine.
Montalbetti defines himself, first and foremost, as a linguist. In his interview with Victor for this feature, he makes this clear: “My work as a poet is part of my work as a linguist.” We are not used to this kind of self-assessment, to making literature contingent upon a different field of study. Montalbetti is an exception. His concern for language itself seems to lie at the center of all his artistic and intellectual endeavors. Nonetheless, behind this attitude (if we can call it that) we find a crucial question: How should we approach a poem? Should we interpret it, or is there more to the poem than its meaning, than what it’s trying to say? Montalbetti’s answer is personal and unique. His inquiries, as readers should know, have generated growing interest outside of Peru.
This dossier organized by Victor Vimos includes writing by Mexican academic and poet Tania Favela, who approaches Montalbetti’s work from different directions. The first is her highly original reading of Montalbetti’s poetry based on the destabilizing force of the Buddhist kōan. The rest of Favela’s article follows this same line, seeking an understanding of “the Montalbettian poem-as-artifact.” Corina Maruzza and Jairo Rojas Rojas contribute a collaborative article on the Peruvian poet’s Cajas. Cajas is an unclassifiable artifact. The authors write, “What is Cajas? An essay in verse? A poem? A linguistics class?” This essay delves into possible answers to these questions. For his part, José Ignacio Padilla analyzes the forces that put Montalbetti’s poetry in motion: on one hand, sense as direction and promise, and on the other, the sign’s becoming. These forces, Padilla tells us, start out in opposition to each other. Reading this article situates us within the field of action that is the poem: “a strange—shockingly strange—mechanism.”
This issue’s second dossier was organized by Chilean poet Micaela Paredes Barraza and focuses on the work of Violeta Parra, to mark a special occasion: the publication of the wonderfully thorough biography Thanks to Life by Ericka Verba (The University of North Carolina Press, 2025). In Chile, Violeta Parra will always be part of the conversation, but it is hard to know how much is known of her work outside her country of origin. Verba’s book, in this regard, is a milestone.
Chilean critic and writer Nicolás Bernales recognizes how hard it is to deal with an artist with such a “complex, unstable, and active personality.” He reminds us of something that, in our countries where memory is so fragile, is not always an apparent truth: “She has always been considered a poet among great poets.” In her article “Violeta Parra: Burning to Ashes,” Chilean poet Rosabetty Muñoz undertakes a more personal, intimate exploration: Violeta as big sister. “Something burned within her being—that fire, proper to the gods,” Rosabetty tells us, and it’s true. Something was set alight. In her own essay, Micaela Paredes analyzes Las últimas composiciones, Violeta Parra’s 1966 LP: “This album condenses and expands, all at once, a life of felicitous expressive pursuits and achievements, nourished by the intense relationship that Violeta wove with Chile’s popular traditions.” Those unfamiliar with this work (which is available on Spotify) will be fascinated by Micaela’s metrical analysis of the song “Mazúrquica modérnica.” Las últimas composiciones is more than an album: it is a journey, it “is the journey of life itself, in all its keys,” as Micaela writes.
In this issue’s interview section, Juan Camilo Rincón speaks with trans writer Camila Sosa Villada about her novel Tesis sobre una domesticación (Tusquets, 2023). Eduardo Suárez interviews Buenos Aires-based Colombian writer Margarita García Robayo. And, last but not least, a happy novelty: Adriana Pacheco of Hablemos, escritoras interviews Spanish essayist and philologist Irene Vallejo. The whole world has fallen in love with her book El infinito en un junco (Siruela, 2019; translated as Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Charlotte Whittle), copies of which Chilean poet Pedro Lastra used to give away, in 2022, to anyone who wanted to read it. There are ways to get back to the classics, and this book is one of them. In consonance with this Spanish presence, this issue also includes a selection of poems by María Ángeles Pérez López of Valladolid. Other poets featured include Damaris Calderón of Cuba, Juan Cristóbal Romero of Chile, and Ximena Gómez of Colombia. In the essay section, we also highlight two Spanish writers: academic Ángel Rivero of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and writer Aloma Rodríguez. We are grateful to Daniel Gascón, editor of the Spanish edition of Letras Libres, for allowing us to share these perspectives from across the Atlantic.
In our translation previews section, we share an excerpt from boy says (a book with no ending) by Néstor Ponce, translated by Max Ubelaker Andrade, and another from Amara Moira’s (So What) If I’m a Puta?, translated by Amanda De Lisio y Bruna Dantas Lobato. And this issue’s book review section comes complete with a wide variety of reflections on new writing from Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile. We also include fiction, Indigenous literature, and Brazilian literature, including texts by Eunice Arruda (1939–2017, Santa Rita do Passa Quatro, São Paulo) and Miró da Muribeca (1960–2022, Recife, Pernambuco). Readers will find all of this and much more in this issue that opens with the poetry of Mario Montalbetti.
Today we publish a Peruvian poet. Tomorrow we will publish other voices that also push forward into the future. Few human activities are more spurred on by enthusiasm, risk, and passion. Readers of poetry are unique in this regard: accomplices in an underground scheme, they read against the grain of their times. This matters not. Poetry is far from a testament to hopelessness. René Char was well aware of this when he wrote, “Impose your chance, hold tight to your happiness and go toward your risk. / Looking your way, they’ll follow” (tr. Elizabeth Bard).
That’s what this new April-June issue of Latin American Literature Today is all about. That and much more.
Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon
