The Equestrian Turtle

English translation of La Tortuga Ecuestre (1939), by Peruvian surrealist poet and artist César Moro (1903-1956). The first Latin American to join the ranks of the Surrealist group in Paris in the 1920's, Moro would go on to organize the first Surrealist exhibition in South America in 1935, as well as, along with André Breton and Wolfgang Paalen, the notorious Exposición Internacional del Surrealismo in Mexico City, in 1940. Moro wrote the majority of his poetry in the French language, and La Tortuga Ecuestre, written in Mexico and unpublished during his lifetime, was the only collection of poems in his native language. Close in spirit to Desnos, Péret and Breton, these 18 explosive erotic poems, inspired by his tempestuous relationship with a young cadet in the Mexican army, offer a licentious, excessive illustration of the liberating possibilities of amour fou.