Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik (April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972) was an Argentine poet.

Alejandra Pizarnik was born on April 29, 1936,in Avellaneda, a city within the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area, Argentina, toJewish immigrant parents from Rowno (now Ukraine). She had a difficult childhood, struggling with a marked stutter, acne and self-esteem issues. She also had a marked habit of gaining weight. These contingencies seriously undermined her self-esteem. Because of her negative body image and her continual comparisons to her sister, Alejandra's life became even more complicated. For this same reason, it is possible that she began to take amphetamines—the same drugs that she became strongly addicted to--, which caused long periods of sleeping disorders such as euphoria and insomnia.

A year after entering the department of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published her first book of poetry, La tierra más ajena (1955). She took courses in literature, journalism, and philosophy at the university of Buenos Aires, but dropped out in order to pursue painting[2] with Juan Batlle Planas. Pizarnik followed her debut work with two more volumes of poems, La última inocencia (1956) and Las aventuras perdidas (1958).

She was an avid reader of fiction and poetry. Beginning with novels, she delved into more literature with similar topics to learn from different points of view. This sparked an interest early on for literature and also for the unconscious, which in turn gave rise to her interest in psychoanalysis.

Pizarnik was apolitical. Her lyricism was influenced by Antonio Porchia, French symbolists—especially Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé—, the spirit of romanticism and by the surrealists. She wrote poetic books of acute sensitivity and formal restfulness for insinuating imagery. The topics of her books focused on loneliness, childhood, pain, and more than anything, death.

Between 1960 and 1964 Pizarnik lived in Paris, where she worked for the magazine Cuadernos and other French editorials. She published poems and criticism in many newspapers, translated for Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux, Aimé Césaire, Yves Bonnefoy and Marguerite Duras. She also studied French religious history and literature at the Sorbonne. There she became friends with Julio Cortázar, Rosa Chacel, Silvina Ocampo and Octavio Paz. Paz even wrote the prologue for her fourth poetry book, Árbol de Diana (1962), which showed how much she had matured in Europe as an author.

She returned to Buenos Aires in 1964, and published her best-known books of poetry: Los trabajos y las noches (1965), Extracción de la piedra de la locura (1968) and El infierno musical (1971).

She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968, and in 1971 a Fulbright Scholarship.

Pizarnik is considered to be one of mid-century Argentina's most powerful and intense poets. Her poetry portrays the life of Latin American women as a bodily destruction by an oppressive and repressive patriarchy.[2]

Pizarnik's poetry claims a clandestine and iconic dimension because the majority of her mature output coincides with the military regimes in Argentine.[2]

Pizarnik ended her life on September 25, 1972, by taking an overdose of Secobarbital sodium at the age of 36 one weekend she was on leave from the psychiatric hospital where she was institutionalized. She is buried in the Cementerio Israelita de La Tablada, La Tablada, Argentina.

• The Most Foreign Country (La tierra más ajena) (1955)
  • translated by Yvette Siegert (Ugly Duckling Presse, October 2015)
• The Final Innocence (La última inocencia) (1956)
  • translated by Yvette Siegert (Ugly Duckling Presse, October 2016)
• The Lost Adventures (Las aventuras perdidas) (1958)
• Diana's Tree (Árbol de Diana) (1962)
  • translated by Yvette Siegert (Ugly Duckling Presse, October 2014)
• Works and Nights (Los trabajos y las noches) (1965)
  • translated by Yvette Siegert (in Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972, New Directions, September 2015)
• Extracting the Stone of Madness (Extracción de la piedra de locura) (1968)
  • translated by Yvette Siegert (in Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972, New Directions, September 2015)
• A Musical Hell (El infierno musical) (1971)
  • translated by Yvette Siegert (New Directions, July 2013; reprinted in Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972 by New Directions, September 2015)
• The Bloody Countess (La condesa sangrienta) (1971)
• Exchanging Lives: Poems and Translations, Translator Susan Bassnett, Peepal Tree, 2002. ISBN 978-1-900715-66-9