La liebre de marzo / The March Hare

by Marosa Di Giorgio

Marosa di Giorgio, a Uruguayan poet of considerable reputation, authored over a dozen works, and won numerous awards in her career. Her hybrid poetics—tone, sonics, puns, playfulness, enigmatic poetic prose—astound poets and readers to this day. Her darkest pieces are often followed by poems that cause pure delight, combining unusual phrasing with spectacular visual images. It was said of her, perhaps more than any other Latin American writer, that at its finest her poetry literally “glistened,” radiating with a lustrous sparkle. Kathryn A. Kopple, author of the acclaimed Little Velásquez (Mirth Press, 2012) brings her scholarship in Latin American studies and love of language to bear in this bespoke translation of Marosa di Giorgio’s LA LIEBRE DE MARZO ~ The March Hare.

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 25, 2013

About the author

Marosa di Giorgio (1932–2004) was a Uruguayan poet and novelist.

Marosa di Giorgio is considered one of the most singular voices in Latin America. Critics tend to agree that her writing is greatly influenced by European surrealism, although her vocabulary, style, and imagery are uniquely her own. Her work deals predominately with the imaginary world of childhood and nature.

In the past few years, Latin American critics such as Hugo Achugar, Luis Bravo, Leonardo Garet, Sylvia Guerra, María Alejandra Minelli, and María Rosa Olivera-Williams have explored Marosa Di Giorgio's writing. Uruguayan poet Roberto Echavarren published in 1991 "Transplatinos", which offers an excellent introduction to Di Giorgio's writing. Selected poems from The March Hare have been translated into English by K.A. Kopple and published in the 1995 by Exact Change Yearbook. An article discussing gender politics, parody, and desire (as elaborated by Gilles Deleuze) also written by K.A. Kopple appeared in March 2000 in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. In'Identity, Nation, Discourse: Latin American Women Writers and Artists, edited by Claire Taylor (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), Soledad Montañez opens up a new discussion of Di Giorgio's erotic writing. Montañez shows how "Di Giorgio's erotic prose illustrates the representation and performance of patriarchal hierarchy as a perverse comedy, creating a genre that constructs gender narratives in order to undermine the patriarchal system from within."Montañez also affirms that "The effect achieved in Marosa's radicalised narrative is ultimately a mocking performance, a burlesque discourse that reveals and denounces domination and power. Through a perverse representation Marosa exposes the complicated matter of culturally constructed sexual norms and develops a writing that is at the same time disturbing and astonishing" (2009: 158).

In 1982 she received the Fraternity Award for literature

Reviews

[Kathryn Kopple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this book was pulled by the publisher. Marosa Di Giorgio's poetry is brilliant, and the work it took for me to translate was years and years. I encourage people to look for her work in other places. She is beginning to appear more in English, or certainly, if you speak Spanish, always best to read in the original.