Time Without Keys: Selected Poems by Ida Vitale

A landmark collection of poetry by one of Latin
America’s most important living writers

“Like this bird / that waits until the light dies / to begin singing, / I write in
darkness, / when nothing shines / and calls out from the earth.”
The celebrated writer Álvaro Mutis envied new readers of Ida Vitale’s poetry:
“unexpected pleasures await them.” Time Without Keys: Selected Poems is
the first volume of Vitale’s illustrious poetry to appear in the US. The selection spans seventy-five years and the wonders within abound—the skies over
Montevideo, falconry, the saxifrage’s bloom, gratitude for the alphabet and for
summer—as do urgent questions about our relationship with the world. How
does our perception of time shape history, as well as our social and political
constructs? Vitale’s poetic and human vitality have made her a storied figure in
the Spanish language and beyond; her writing is revered for being classic and
modern, precise and lucid, intellectually challenging and rich in tradition. This
bilingual edition, presented in reverse chronological order, offers the reader a
wide range of Vitale’s most beloved poems as well as a wealth of recent work.
The translator Sarah Pollack, Vitale’s first translator into English, has written an
informative afterword about Vitale’s life and work.
“Thank you Ida for being you, for your restrained and necessary poetry, for that
Uruguayan memory that fills this cold apartment in Paris with birds.”
—JULIO CORTÁZAR
A landmark collection of poetry by one of Latin
America’s most important living writers
• Translated, with an afterword, by Sarah Pollack
• Bilingual
• Cover design by Tyler Comrie
Time Without Keys:
Selected Poems

IDA VITALE was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1923. She is one of Latin America’s most celebrated and respected poets. Vitale has published over thirty works of
poetry, prose, and literary criticism, in addition to numerous translations. In Uruguay
and Mexico, where she lived in exile, she was an important intellectual figure. In the
late 1980s, Vitale settled in Austin, TX until her return to Montevideo in 2016, after the
death of her husband. She is the fifth woman to win the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the
highest accolade in Spanish. Her awards include the National Prize in Uruguay, the
Reina Sofía Prize, the Octavio Paz Prize, the García Lorca Prize, and the Max Jacob
Prize. In 2019, the BBC named her one of the world’s 100 most influential women.

SARAH POLLACK is a professor of Latin American literature and translation studies at the College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has also
translated works by Juan Villoro, Silvia Eugenia Castillero, Fabio Morábito, Enrique
Fierro, and Cristina Peri Rossi.