Peter Clenott

Poet Luis (Lucho) Hernández is legendary in his native Peru, and virtually unknown outside it. His short, tragic life–haunted by addiction and periodic reclusion in rehabilitation centers–and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, have made him a cult figure. Exceptionally gifted in his youth, his only three books of poetry were published by the time he was twenty-four. Until his untimely death at age thirty-six in Argentina, Luis Hernández didn’t publish another book. Yet, he did not fall silent. He wrote in cheap, school-boy notebooks, filling them with poems, musical notations, quotes (attributed and unattributed), notes to himself, translations, musings, clippings from newspapers and comic strips, and drawings, all in different colored pencils and pens. The present selection of Hernández’s poetry, the first ever in English, is drawn from these notebooks. All the original texts have been transcribed directly from the manuscript sources, correcting errors and mistranscriptions that have crept into a number of the published versions. Several poems are published here for the first time in any language. These moving poems are born under the sign of Melancholy and Nostalgia. Hernández’s unique voice evokes an irrevocably distant past from a desolate site in the present. Happiness and joy, love and fulfillment, are remembered in poetic scraps and fragments, recollected in silence, contemplated in sadness, solitude, and dream.