One of the most renowned voices in Latin American poetry, Blanca Varela was born in Lima, Peru, to a family with a long history of writing and performing poetry. She was the daughter of poet and singer Serafina Quinteras (pseudonym of Esmeralda Gonzales Castro [1902-2004]), granddaughter of the poet Delia Castro Márquez (1874-1939), and great-granddaughter of the writer Manuela Antonia Márquez (1844-1890). During the 1950s, she traveled to Europe, where she established contact with surrealist poetry and existentialist thought. Her first books of poems, Ese se puerto existe (That port exists), appeared in 1959. Back in Peru in the 1960s, she worked as a journalist and a member of editorial boards, being the director of the publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica from 1974 to 1997. Later in her life, she received international awards suchs as Premio Internacional de Poesía Ciudad de Granada 2006 and Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana 2007. Her poem "Ejercicios" was published in Valces y otras falsas confesiones in 1971.

Ejercicios

I

Un poema
como una gran batalla
me arroja en esta arena
sin más enemigo que yo

yo
y el gran aire de las palabras

II

miente la nube
la luz miente
los ojos
los engañados de siempre
no se cansan de tanta fábula

IIl

terzo azul
ignorancia de estar en la ajena pupila
como dios en la nada

IV

pienso en alas de fuego en música
pero no
no es eso lo que temo
sino el torvo juicio de la luz