The Equestrian Turtle and Other Poems

César Moro

The Equestrian Turtle is one of the most remarkable poetic collections of twentieth-century Peru and a key Surrealist text.

Written in Mexico in 1938-1939 and published in Lima in 1957, this cycle of poems is an oblique chronicle of the poet’s relationship with the Mexican army officer Antonio Acosta. Exiled from Peru for political reasons, Moro spent the next ten years in Mexico, where he composed the thirteen poems included in the original publication of The Equestrian Turtle. This volume also includes four poems written for the collection but ultimately omitted, five closely related poems from this period, and seven “Letters to Antonio,” written in poetic prose. The letters, emerging from daily life, provide a fascinating complement to the poetry. Translators Leslie Bary and Esteban Quispe worked from the scholarly edition Obra poética completa (Alción Editora, 2015), one of at least eight editions published in Spanish. While the book has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, this is the first bilingual edition in Spanish and English.

César Moro (Lima, Peru, 1903-1956) was a queer poet, painter and art critic, and a central figure in the transatlantic avant-gardes of the twentieth century. Living in France for much of the 1920s and 30s and writing in French, he was the only Latin American writer to participate in the original Surrealist movement and contribute to journals like Le surréalisme au service de la Révolution and Violette Nozières. In Mexico, where he lived from the late 1930s through most of the 40s, he worked with André Breton to create the Fourth International Surrealist Exhibition, collaborated with Wolfgang Paalen on the international Surrealist magazine DYN, and translated writers like Hans Arp, Leonora Carrington, Paul Éluard, and Benjamin Péret. Although he published poems and essays in Peru, Mexico, and Argentina throughout his life, The Equestrian Turtle is his only book in Spanish. Moro’s papers, including an important series of letters to Emilio Adolfo Westphalen and other unpublished works, are housed at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.