The Galloping Hour: French Poems

Alejandra Pizarnik's poetry collection Los trabajos y las noches, can be considered as one of her best works. This paper analyses the ideological and technical motivations that brought the poet to write this collection. Her main achievements are: dismissing the tragic character " Alejandra " and putting into practice a poetic theory of her own.

 Abstract the work of alejandra Pizarnik has been a central part of the questioning of subjectivity in recent literary criticism. two basic patterns have emerged: one outlines the unification of the poetic persona and the poet's tragic life; another draws attention to the fundamental lack that is presupposed (even in the first case) once subjectivity is understood structurally (i.e., linguistically). While this divide has been posited as the rupture between Romanticism and postmodernism, this paper claims that the basic pattern of subjectivity in question marks a continuity with the Romantic tradition and, furthermore, that this tradition is one that abolishes the singularity of the poem for Pizarnik. a third subjective position then emerges, one that Pizarnik simply terms 'the new voice, unknown'. This third subjective position divides her oeuvre from within and incorporates the other two.

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Translations of the following poems by Luís Carlos Patraquim: "Metamorphosis," "I draw the curtains of the afternoon . . .,” "I think of your hands as gills inside the sea . . .,” "Song," "Indian Ocean Ode," "Carnivorous Elegy," "Island, body, woman . . .,” "You were, at one time . . .," "Dis-sonnet" and extracts from "Lydenburg Blues."

Nocturnalia. Poetics of the Night in Spain (15th-18th centuries). Special edition of eHumanista. Journal of Iberian Studies 22 (2012): 289-329

In the Western literary canon, night has been associated with the concept of creation since the 7th century B.C., when Hesiod popularised this feature in his Theogony (vv. 211-32). The venerable epic poet humanised the ‘night’ throughout Nyx –in Greek, Νύξ–, daughter of Chaos and Earth,2 and the actual ‘mother of the gods’ (Bell 173), as West has underscored (Hesiod 35-36). Precisely because “Hesiod’s model for the coming into being of the cosmos is not that of purposeful creation by a designing Creator, but follows instead the procreative pattern of a human family” (Clay 14), the connection of this pagan model to that of Christianity was quite easy to establish due to the family component of the Trinity (So 12-15), so that with the help of the great blend of genres and models used by Hesiod to generate his poems (Rodríguez Adrados 215-16), this family-related element rapidly facilitated nocturnality’s transit from the Classical pagan imagery towards Christian thought, proving, to paraphrase Pedrosa, “los cimientos paganos del edificio cristiano” (2012, 3). Hesiod’s tracks are not, however, easy to trace. María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, the most distinguished scholar to study these Classical components in medieval Spanish literature, did not find any other possible influence of Hesiod besides a subtle reference to the well-known motif of the nightingale (1975, 104).

Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 2022

Author’s Note on the Poems: The first three poems address poetry either directly or indirectly. “Corrida” envisions poetry as the transcendental equivalent of the bullfight, abounding in symbols of light and darkness, tragedy and triumph. The traje de luces is the dazzlingly brilliant suit of gold braid and sequins (“brilliant like the sun”) worn by the bullfighter, or torero. “Winged words” probably needs no explanation. It’s about the birth of poetry from a place of silent, creative darkness (such as a bird’s nest inside a hollow tree trunk). The quetzal is a strikingly beautiful, iridescent green bird (with red belly) that sports an elegant, long tail. It is native to Central America. “Swimming Pool” likens poetry to both a refreshing dip in the wet and a dive into the transcendent. Swimming pool as a stand-in for the meditation hall. Painter David Hockney’s swimming pools are distinguished by their signature splash. I have an affinity with members of the mineral realm, the world of stones. Apparently Pablo Neruda did as well. He wrote a book of poems (Piedras del cielo/Stones of the Sky) in praise of turquoise, amethyst, diamond, topaz and others. Hence, “Plume Agate,” an ode in the style of Neruda. The remaining poems all have to do with experiences or inspirations encountered while on the journey.

World Literature Today, 1994