emsemsems's review against another edition
5.0
'Ambushed in my writing
you are singing in my poem.
Captive of your sweet voice
engraved in my memory.
Bird intent on its flight.
Air tattooed by an absence.
Clock that keeps time with me
so I never wake up.'
Someone I hold dearly, but haven't spoken to or seen in a while had given me a copy of Pizarnik's poems on my birthday a few years ago and I haven't read it until very recently. Alejandra Pizarnik is brilliant, and her work, glorious (to say the least).
marigolds_and_lavander's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
scrow1022's review
5.0
These poems repel me and pull me in at the same time. Such darkness beautifully written. I keep these to dip into so I can remind myself of these places she describes, and I am so grateful I don't live there or even as closely as I used to.
"Palabra por palabra yo escribo la noche."
"Palabra por palabra yo escribo la noche."
lokster71's review against another edition
4.0
"But this night of mine can't be killed by any sun."
This is a collection of Pizarnik's middle/late poems and some posthumously collected work. It is the first decent collection in English, although this contains the original Spanish language versions of each poem.
Pizarnik committed suicide on 25 September 1972 and as you make your way through this collection that will come as no surprise to you. Death - hers in particular - haunts this collection. As do shadows, darkness and night.
"The spectral texture of darkness, this melody in my bones, this breath from various silences, this going deeper and deeper, this dark, dark gallery, this sinking without sinking."
from The Word for Desire (p109)
Influenced by surrealism and by Baudelaire, Nerval, Rimbaud, Artaund, and Lautréamont these aren't easy poems to read but there's something about them that got under my skin. Did I understand them all? No. I understood enough and I understood that I would be coming back to these poems again and again.
Some of the works are long prose poems, almost poetic short stories. Others are short and sharp.
"no one knows me I speak the night
no one knows me I speak my body
no one knows me I speak the rain
no one knows me I speak the dead"
Short Cantos, I (p179)
There were several poems I liked a lot - Poem for a Father, Some of Shadows Texts - "I ask for silence. My story is long and mournful, like Ophelia's hair." (199) - For Janis Joplin (fragment), Only the Nights, Memories of the Little House of Song and. perhaps my favourite in the whole collection, Psychopathology Ward, which features the line - and I've edited the c-word here just in case I get into trouble with Goodreads but in the book it is printed in full: "I speak of the c**t and I speak of death." But is such a profoundly personal poem that it is almost painful.
There's something ethereal - is that the right word? No. Something...alternative about Pizarnik's poetry. As if you're reading something from a shadow dimension. A place wrapped in darkness but not lost in it. A place perhaps without much hope. Perhaps this is all beyond my little brain. These poems will haunt me I think and there are lines I wish I could learn off by heart. And I might just do that.
I suspect this review will be of no use to anyone. But read it and make up your own mind.
"no
words
do not make love
they make absence
if I said water would i drink?
if I said bread would i eat?"
from On This Night, In This World (p191)
This is a collection of Pizarnik's middle/late poems and some posthumously collected work. It is the first decent collection in English, although this contains the original Spanish language versions of each poem.
Pizarnik committed suicide on 25 September 1972 and as you make your way through this collection that will come as no surprise to you. Death - hers in particular - haunts this collection. As do shadows, darkness and night.
"The spectral texture of darkness, this melody in my bones, this breath from various silences, this going deeper and deeper, this dark, dark gallery, this sinking without sinking."
from The Word for Desire (p109)
Influenced by surrealism and by Baudelaire, Nerval, Rimbaud, Artaund, and Lautréamont these aren't easy poems to read but there's something about them that got under my skin. Did I understand them all? No. I understood enough and I understood that I would be coming back to these poems again and again.
Some of the works are long prose poems, almost poetic short stories. Others are short and sharp.
"no one knows me I speak the night
no one knows me I speak my body
no one knows me I speak the rain
no one knows me I speak the dead"
Short Cantos, I (p179)
There were several poems I liked a lot - Poem for a Father, Some of Shadows Texts - "I ask for silence. My story is long and mournful, like Ophelia's hair." (199) - For Janis Joplin (fragment), Only the Nights, Memories of the Little House of Song and. perhaps my favourite in the whole collection, Psychopathology Ward, which features the line - and I've edited the c-word here just in case I get into trouble with Goodreads but in the book it is printed in full: "I speak of the c**t and I speak of death." But is such a profoundly personal poem that it is almost painful.
There's something ethereal - is that the right word? No. Something...alternative about Pizarnik's poetry. As if you're reading something from a shadow dimension. A place wrapped in darkness but not lost in it. A place perhaps without much hope. Perhaps this is all beyond my little brain. These poems will haunt me I think and there are lines I wish I could learn off by heart. And I might just do that.
I suspect this review will be of no use to anyone. But read it and make up your own mind.
"no
words
do not make love
they make absence
if I said water would i drink?
if I said bread would i eat?"
from On This Night, In This World (p191)
motifenjoyer's review
4.0
HOLY SHIT
I didn't care for the first section but so much of this is absolutely brilliant.
I didn't care for the first section but so much of this is absolutely brilliant.
jenna0010's review
4.0
About the ways our self sections off, detaches itself, crumbles away, fragile and precarious. About loneliness and trying to find cohesion and resisting cohesion and sadness. About losing and trembling and reaching for the night.
Gosh. Nice stuff.
Gosh. Nice stuff.