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Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972
Revered by the likes of Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolano, Alejandra Pizarnik is still a hidden treasure in the U.S. Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 1972 unearths this extraordinary poet for English readers in a bilingual edition that spans the heights of Pizarnik s oeuvre. In her brief life, Pizarnik produced an astonishingly powerful body of work. In her own words, she was drawn to the suffering of Baudelaire, the suicide of Nerval, the premature silence of Rimbaud, the mysterious and fleeting presence of Lautreamont, as well as to the unparalleled intensity of Artaud s physical and moral suffering. Obsessed with themes of solitude, childhood, madness, and death, Pizarnik explores the shifting valences of the self and the vague border between speech and silence. This compilation of poems includes the full collections of her middle to late work, as well as a selection of posthumously published verse."
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Alejandra Pizarnik
106 books2,003 followersBorn in Buenos Aires to Russian parents who had fled Europe and the Nazi Holocaust, Alejandra Pizarnik was destined for literary greatness as well as an early death. She died from an ostensibly self-administered overdose of barbiturates on 25 September 1972. A few words scribbled on a slate that same month, reiterating her desire to go nowhere "but to the bottom," sum up her lifelong aspiration as a human being and as a writer. The compulsion to head for the "bottom" or "abyss" points to her desire to surrender to nothingness in an ultimate experience of ecstasy and poetic fulfillment in which life and art would be fused, albeit at her own risk. "Ojalá pudiera vivir solamente en éxtasis, haciendo el cuerpo del poema con mi cuerpo" (If I could only live in nothing but ecstasy, making the body of the poem with my body).
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March 6, 2025
‘Before words can run out, something in the heart must die,’ wrote Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik. While the words ran out when the poet tragically took her own life at the age of 36, her words still linger as a dazzling legacy that has inspired future generations of poets for decades. Alejandra Pizarnik could ‘write as one who raises a knife in the dark / in breakdown of words / abandoning the palace of language’ and Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972 is a marvelous selected works showcasing Pizarnik’s stunning gift of a language she investigated as a space of decay. Her work is marked by motifs on night, death, the limitations of language, on silence that engulfs and of our bodies engulfed by silence, and of the descent into madness within these silences. There is a darkness to her work, but one that comes alive as if darkness could simultaneously be radiance in her descriptions of ‘the night splintered with stars,’ night ‘shaped like a howling wolf,’ or night that 'is the color of the eyelids of the dead...word by word I am writing the night.' Chronicling the bulk of her short yet fruitful career, this is a treasured collection of poetry of an inimitable poet who used words to unlock the world and show us what lies within.
On this night in this world
nothing is ever what you wish to say
the tongue is an organ of knowledge
about the failure of every poem
castrated by its own tongue
which is the organ of re-creation
of re-cognition
but not of resurrection
of the thing as negation
no
words
do not make love
they make absence
—from On This Night, In This World
I first discovered Alejandra Pizarnik well over a decade ago when my good friend Mike Puma—a regular on goodreads with whom I’m lucky I was able to become close friends with and hang out often before he passed away in 2021—mailed me the massive anthology The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry. Her poem in there simultaneously took my breath away and felt like a breath of fresh air and I frantically scoured the internet for any books of her. This volume was not yet published and I made do with really awesome pamphlets such as her A Musical Hell and completely fell in love with her work. But so have many others and Pizarnik left a long legacy from her rather brief life, having left what translator Patricio Ferrari called ‘one of the most unusual bodies of work in Latin American literature’, but one that is often cited as a major inspiration for the generations of Latin American poets to come.
“House of the Mind”
the mind's house
rebuilt letter by letter
word by word
in my double paper figure
crosses the sea of ink
to give new form
to a new feeling
it opens its mouth
green and rootless;
the word without its body
a new musical order
of colors of bodies of excess
of small forms
that move scream say never
the night says never
the night utters me
in a poem
There is a sense of disintegration throughout Pizarnik’s poetry as she often seeks what is not there or what is otherwise intangible beyond the outline formed under a frail net of language. Silence and absence are given shape in poems that seek to answer ‘What is it that shadows give each other?’ Her poetry is often suffused with existential suffering while also seeking to detach herself from the “I” of her works as if to salve said suffering. It is as if she seeks salvation in the very words she deconstructs, an irony not lost on her as she writes ‘hide me from this battle with words.’ Yet it is in her battle with words she comes alive, writing of the absence, the night, the silences to which she battles herself from falling into. Or seeing others (‘Horror of searching for your eyes in the space that is full of the screams of this poem.’), or of love vanish into the void as well. There is a sense of erasure always occuring, such as in the poem Daybreak which, in honor of the poem, I wrote on the outer wall of my garage years ago in chalk. It finally erased in the rain but left a stain so you can still read it, an odd permanence despite erasure that is somehow befitting of Pizarnik's lasting legacy despite her bodily absence. Anyways, here's the poem:
Naked dreaming a solar night.
I have lain for animal days.
The wind and the rain have erased me
as they would a fire, a poem
written on a wall.
Being erased or stepping into the oblivion of the night are a strong motif in her work. ‘But you I want to look at until your face fades from my fear, like a bird stepping away from the sharp edges of night,’ she writes in Paths of the Mirror, ‘like a girl drawn in pink chalk on a very old wall, suddenly wiped away by the rain.’ The pink chalk girl, the poem on the wall, the mortal body all find themselves erased by time and life in her work and temporality is felt upon each page. These poems are sharp yet enigmatic, morose yet lively in their insights, brutal yet beautiful.
'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.'
Born Flora Pizarnik in 1936 (she would adopt the name Alejandra in her teen years), the young Pizarnik often suffered from mental illness and would later be diagnosed with clinical schizophrenia. Though she dropped out of the University of Buenas Aires where she was studying writing in order to pursue painting, she would release two volumes of poetry by the time she turned 20. Inspired by works of fiction and the surrealist’s writing techniques (she often used automatic writing), Pizarnik sought with poetry to answer her own question: ‘Think of Kafka, of Dostoevsky: what poet causes such trembling?’ Pizarnik ‘was obsessed with the in-between,’ Patricio Ferrari wrote of her in the Paris Review, ‘with the lyrical subject between cultures and between languages; she explored both sides of the mirror.’ Pizarnik moved to Paris in the 1960s to work for a magazine and became companions with writes like Julio Cortázar, Silvina Ocampo, and Octavio Paz while continuing to publish a wealth of poetry. Unfortunately she cut her own life short in 1972.
‘The soft rumour of spreading weeds.
The sound of things ruined by the wind.
They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists.
I would like to be dead and also to go inside another heart.’
There is a repetition of imagery and motifs that give this collection a feeling not unlike jazz, playing with the scales over and over and somehow feeling fresh at every turn. By channeling her pain into a poem, they become ‘a song—a tunnel to pass through,’ and we the reader pass through said tunnel into her heart and mind along with her. We feel ‘the urge to shrink myself down, sit in my hand, and shower myself with kisses,’ yet we also feel each sorrow, each absence, and hear each silence.
‘I want to exist beyond myself: with the embodied ones.
I want to exist as what I am: as a fixed idea. I want to bark, instead of praising the silence of the space you’re born into.’
Shadows are another frequent motif here, a perfect metaphor for the way she seeks to understand how absence has its own way of occupying a space and there are a large collection of otherwise untitled “shadow texts” to treat the reader with. ‘Metaphors of suffocation unbind from their shroud,’ and Pizarnik could paint a metaphor with words with the best of them. The world comes alive in her metaphors and, by housing it in words, seems to take the edge off reality for her. 'Maybe someday we’ll find refuge in true reality,' she writes in A Musical Hell, 'in the meantime, can I just say how opposed I am to all of this?’’ It is a tragedy she departed so early, opposed to all of this, yet I have to admit ever since reading that poem saying 'can I just say how opposed I am to all of this?' became a favorite saying of mine (especially at work).
‘And no one understands. All my life waits for you. And nevertheless, I search for the night of the poem. I only think of your body but I redo the body of my poem like someone who tries to cure her own wound.’
‘May your body always be a beloved space for revelations,’ Pizarnik wrote, and while she only occupied hers for a short time, we are blessed with the revelations she found and wrote down. Extracting the Stone of Madness is a wonderful collection that I have found myself returning to again and again over the years.
5/5
I, the sad waiting for a word
to name the thing I look for
and what am I looking for?
not the name of the deity
not the name of the names
but the precise and precious names
of my hidden desires
—from Only the Night
Alejandra Pizarnik art by Katy Horan from Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers
On this night in this world
nothing is ever what you wish to say
the tongue is an organ of knowledge
about the failure of every poem
castrated by its own tongue
which is the organ of re-creation
of re-cognition
but not of resurrection
of the thing as negation
no
words
do not make love
they make absence
—from On This Night, In This World
I first discovered Alejandra Pizarnik well over a decade ago when my good friend Mike Puma—a regular on goodreads with whom I’m lucky I was able to become close friends with and hang out often before he passed away in 2021—mailed me the massive anthology The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry. Her poem in there simultaneously took my breath away and felt like a breath of fresh air and I frantically scoured the internet for any books of her. This volume was not yet published and I made do with really awesome pamphlets such as her A Musical Hell and completely fell in love with her work. But so have many others and Pizarnik left a long legacy from her rather brief life, having left what translator Patricio Ferrari called ‘one of the most unusual bodies of work in Latin American literature’, but one that is often cited as a major inspiration for the generations of Latin American poets to come.
“House of the Mind”
the mind's house
rebuilt letter by letter
word by word
in my double paper figure
crosses the sea of ink
to give new form
to a new feeling
it opens its mouth
green and rootless;
the word without its body
a new musical order
of colors of bodies of excess
of small forms
that move scream say never
the night says never
the night utters me
in a poem
There is a sense of disintegration throughout Pizarnik’s poetry as she often seeks what is not there or what is otherwise intangible beyond the outline formed under a frail net of language. Silence and absence are given shape in poems that seek to answer ‘What is it that shadows give each other?’ Her poetry is often suffused with existential suffering while also seeking to detach herself from the “I” of her works as if to salve said suffering. It is as if she seeks salvation in the very words she deconstructs, an irony not lost on her as she writes ‘hide me from this battle with words.’ Yet it is in her battle with words she comes alive, writing of the absence, the night, the silences to which she battles herself from falling into. Or seeing others (‘Horror of searching for your eyes in the space that is full of the screams of this poem.’), or of love vanish into the void as well. There is a sense of erasure always occuring, such as in the poem Daybreak which, in honor of the poem, I wrote on the outer wall of my garage years ago in chalk. It finally erased in the rain but left a stain so you can still read it, an odd permanence despite erasure that is somehow befitting of Pizarnik's lasting legacy despite her bodily absence. Anyways, here's the poem:
Naked dreaming a solar night.
I have lain for animal days.
The wind and the rain have erased me
as they would a fire, a poem
written on a wall.
Being erased or stepping into the oblivion of the night are a strong motif in her work. ‘But you I want to look at until your face fades from my fear, like a bird stepping away from the sharp edges of night,’ she writes in Paths of the Mirror, ‘like a girl drawn in pink chalk on a very old wall, suddenly wiped away by the rain.’ The pink chalk girl, the poem on the wall, the mortal body all find themselves erased by time and life in her work and temporality is felt upon each page. These poems are sharp yet enigmatic, morose yet lively in their insights, brutal yet beautiful.
'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.'
Born Flora Pizarnik in 1936 (she would adopt the name Alejandra in her teen years), the young Pizarnik often suffered from mental illness and would later be diagnosed with clinical schizophrenia. Though she dropped out of the University of Buenas Aires where she was studying writing in order to pursue painting, she would release two volumes of poetry by the time she turned 20. Inspired by works of fiction and the surrealist’s writing techniques (she often used automatic writing), Pizarnik sought with poetry to answer her own question: ‘Think of Kafka, of Dostoevsky: what poet causes such trembling?’ Pizarnik ‘was obsessed with the in-between,’ Patricio Ferrari wrote of her in the Paris Review, ‘with the lyrical subject between cultures and between languages; she explored both sides of the mirror.’ Pizarnik moved to Paris in the 1960s to work for a magazine and became companions with writes like Julio Cortázar, Silvina Ocampo, and Octavio Paz while continuing to publish a wealth of poetry. Unfortunately she cut her own life short in 1972.
‘The soft rumour of spreading weeds.
The sound of things ruined by the wind.
They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists.
I would like to be dead and also to go inside another heart.’
There is a repetition of imagery and motifs that give this collection a feeling not unlike jazz, playing with the scales over and over and somehow feeling fresh at every turn. By channeling her pain into a poem, they become ‘a song—a tunnel to pass through,’ and we the reader pass through said tunnel into her heart and mind along with her. We feel ‘the urge to shrink myself down, sit in my hand, and shower myself with kisses,’ yet we also feel each sorrow, each absence, and hear each silence.
‘I want to exist beyond myself: with the embodied ones.
I want to exist as what I am: as a fixed idea. I want to bark, instead of praising the silence of the space you’re born into.’
Shadows are another frequent motif here, a perfect metaphor for the way she seeks to understand how absence has its own way of occupying a space and there are a large collection of otherwise untitled “shadow texts” to treat the reader with. ‘Metaphors of suffocation unbind from their shroud,’ and Pizarnik could paint a metaphor with words with the best of them. The world comes alive in her metaphors and, by housing it in words, seems to take the edge off reality for her. 'Maybe someday we’ll find refuge in true reality,' she writes in A Musical Hell, 'in the meantime, can I just say how opposed I am to all of this?’’ It is a tragedy she departed so early, opposed to all of this, yet I have to admit ever since reading that poem saying 'can I just say how opposed I am to all of this?' became a favorite saying of mine (especially at work).
‘And no one understands. All my life waits for you. And nevertheless, I search for the night of the poem. I only think of your body but I redo the body of my poem like someone who tries to cure her own wound.’
‘May your body always be a beloved space for revelations,’ Pizarnik wrote, and while she only occupied hers for a short time, we are blessed with the revelations she found and wrote down. Extracting the Stone of Madness is a wonderful collection that I have found myself returning to again and again over the years.
5/5
I, the sad waiting for a word
to name the thing I look for
and what am I looking for?
not the name of the deity
not the name of the names
but the precise and precious names
of my hidden desires
—from Only the Night
Alejandra Pizarnik art by Katy Horan from Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers
May 1, 2021
you have to cry until you break
in order to make or utter a small song,
to scream so much to fill the holes of absence
that's what you did, what I did.
It is satisfying to end such a bleak year treasuring greatness. I am not sure I had heard of Alejandra Pzarnik until a month ago. Bolaño likely cited her in some list but it didn't register at the time. Why would it? Thus, I was greeted with the astonishing. Apparently Piznarik spent most of her time subtracting words from her verse. This honing creates something almost ghostly. Yes, there is a reliance on the elementals, but here is a dark horizon where strange raptures and solitary oblivion both occur, simultaneously and almost musically. I kept reading and rereading, not to elucidate but to revel. The course navigated is offstage. The revealed truth remains but paper dolls, a favorite trope of hers: an embodiment of our all-too-human perspective, our arrested childhood and the surface upon which we scrawl our collective confession. These brittle figures are in peril from all the elements, as well as our encroaching indifference.
Like a girl made of pink chalk on a very old wall that is suddenly washed away by the rain.
5.1.2021
Where my first reading in December found profundity in the sparse language, this second reading appeared infinitely rich, a sprawling world where our legacy of language appears broken.
in order to make or utter a small song,
to scream so much to fill the holes of absence
that's what you did, what I did.
It is satisfying to end such a bleak year treasuring greatness. I am not sure I had heard of Alejandra Pzarnik until a month ago. Bolaño likely cited her in some list but it didn't register at the time. Why would it? Thus, I was greeted with the astonishing. Apparently Piznarik spent most of her time subtracting words from her verse. This honing creates something almost ghostly. Yes, there is a reliance on the elementals, but here is a dark horizon where strange raptures and solitary oblivion both occur, simultaneously and almost musically. I kept reading and rereading, not to elucidate but to revel. The course navigated is offstage. The revealed truth remains but paper dolls, a favorite trope of hers: an embodiment of our all-too-human perspective, our arrested childhood and the surface upon which we scrawl our collective confession. These brittle figures are in peril from all the elements, as well as our encroaching indifference.
Like a girl made of pink chalk on a very old wall that is suddenly washed away by the rain.
5.1.2021
Where my first reading in December found profundity in the sparse language, this second reading appeared infinitely rich, a sprawling world where our legacy of language appears broken.
December 13, 2015
"No es muda la muerte. Escucho el canto de los enlutados sellar las hendiduras del silencio. Escucho tu dulcísimo llanto florecer mi silencio gris."
Quiero partir de la base de que me aventuré a leer a esta maravillosa escritora una vez más un domingo por la tarde, supongo que si ya la han leído anteriormente sabrán que es toda una osadía, pero sigo acá. Leerla siempre me genera una sensación extraña, como si creara un agujero, el vacío en mí que automáticamente vuelve a llenar con su poesía y me deja temblando de melancolía. Qué mujer más increíble, qué desgarradora y mortuoria su pluma.
Quiero partir de la base de que me aventuré a leer a esta maravillosa escritora una vez más un domingo por la tarde, supongo que si ya la han leído anteriormente sabrán que es toda una osadía, pero sigo acá. Leerla siempre me genera una sensación extraña, como si creara un agujero, el vacío en mí que automáticamente vuelve a llenar con su poesía y me deja temblando de melancolía. Qué mujer más increíble, qué desgarradora y mortuoria su pluma.
August 16, 2018
Caminos del Espejo
xii.
Pero el silencio es cierto. Por eso escribo. Estoy sola y escribe. No, no estoy sola. Hay alguien aquí que tiembla. […]
xv.
Delicia de perderse en la imagen presentida. Yo me levanté de mi cadáver, yo fui en busca de quien soy. Peregrina de mí, he ido hacia la que duerme en un país al viento.
xvi.
Mi caída sin fin a mi caída sin fin en donde nadie me aguardó pues al mirar quién me aguardaba no vi otra cosa a mí misma.
xvii.
Algo caía en el silencio. Mi última palabra fue yo pero me refería al alba luminosa.
Paths of the Mirror
xii.
But the silence is certain. This is why I write. I am alone and I write. No, I am not alone. There is someone here who is trembling. […]
xv.
The pleasure of losing yourself in the image foreseen. I rose from my body and went out in search of who I am. A pilgrim of my self [or from my self; the Spanish is ambiguous], I have gone to the one who sleeps in the winds of her country.
xvi.
My fall that is endless into my fall that is endless, where no one expected me, since when I looked to see who expected me, I saw no other thing than my self.
xvii.
Something falling in the silence. My final word was I, but by this I meant the luminous dawn.
*
Fragmentos para Dominar el Silencio
...
La muerte ha restituido al silencio su prestigio hechizante. Y yo no diré mi poema y yo he de decirlo.
Aun si el poema (aquí, ahora) no tiene sentido, no tiene destino.
Fragments to Dominate the Silence
...
Death has refunded silence its spellbinding prestige. And I won’t say my poem and I have to say it. Even if the poem (here, now) has no meaning, it has no fate.
Su poesía, su prosa poética; brillantes, desgarradoras. Sin duda, seguiré leyendo su obra, la cual refleja un profundo conocimiento de la naturaleza humana, incluyendo sus numerosos claroscuros.
Her poetry, her lyrical prose; insightful, heart-wrenching. Undoubtedly, I'll keep reading her work, which shows a deep understanding of human nature, including its countless chiaroscuros.
Jan 08, 2014
* Note to self: translate, add to blog
** Later on my blog.
May 23, 2022
De los pocos poemarios que he leído. Melancólicos, a veces tristes y muy pocas veces positivos, pero de alguna manera relajantes ya que te hacen darte cuenta que no eres la única persona en el mundo que se siente así.
August 28, 2020
the very first entry in this collection made me think of those moments in these movies that have pretentious protagonists string profound sounding pretty words that means dogshit in any context.
but Alejandra Pizarnik makes you pause, stop, halt, look away, take a breath, look at those four lines again, reach for the post-its and scribble it down hurriedly with a stubby pencil. it takes only thirty minutes to realize that you are going to run out of post-its and the pencil is going to get blunt and no lead remains to jot down more memorable moments from this collection. below are my notes.
Works and nights
they write this - "May your body always be a beloved space for revelations." how can I not grin foolishly at this? and this is where I wonder, "You announce yourself like thirst. ", where were you when you penned this down Alejandra, for this, of solitude, of night, of silence, of loneliness, of abandonment, just breaks my heart. and it continues, "because a face is calling, fitted to the darkness, a precious stone" in a more lonely way. there is a sense of longing for the things lost, of people gone - those who were once dear and near, not lovers but just, dear. She gives them a special mention, a space in hear heart and misses them and mourns for the space they left behind "the birds would draw small cages on my eyes". (damn, that's a fantastic line that i kept reading and reading and reading.) there is a line in future she writes, "They want to dusk me, they plan to death me. Help me not to ask for help."
there is just a lot of noise; outside of me, inside of me. so she says, "I stored up the purest words for making new silences." she continues to write more about silence. the very small space between absolute silence and bare minimal words necessary to communicate. the conflict of difference, of borders and of differences - "a thread of miserable union".
Extracting the stone of madness
there is a contrast of harshness and beauty coexisting and for the most part, it gives me vertigo. from the titular 'Vertigo', "This lilac unleaves.
It falls from itself
and hides its ancient shadow.
I will die of such things."
this section deliciously balances on this precarious note; "Coming up to eye level: silent figures, figures of desperation. Grey and heavy voices calling out from the former site of my heart." its heart racing, edge of the seat thriller variety but only in poetry fashion. can we get any less jarring than this? "To the autumn in the blue of a wall: be a comfort for the dead little girls." its probably the titular poem that stands out from everything else. "I speak the way I speak inside. ", she says. its the way the words sound, they come to and they translate to pen and paper that end up becoming poetry. its in the binges of writing and how they sound in mouth when they are said together in different ways in different times. its loud in silence, it whispers in death. it speaks of what you and i know. its the truth of what we know and what we don't. our fears, our loves, the instincts we ignore. she ends the entry with, "Why doesn’t anyone say anything? Why the great silence?" we are waiting for the other to talk. but neither of us talk.
A Musical Hell
"My name, my pronoun — a grey void.", of absences and memories. and there it is. this is what i was waiting for: "Metaphors of suffocation unbind from their shroud — the poem." isn't that true? hmm?
Uncollected Poems
a collection of yearning, perhaps. all of them has her yearning, wanting something bigger, greater than what the world had to offer. of distant future, of searching for what she knows is not coming - a different kind of vertigo she calls it. "Horror of searching for your eyes in the space that is full of the screams of this poem." - she says it all. i am very much surprised seeing Silvina Ocampo mentioned in a poem as she is a writer am reading currently. "I turn into water in your poem about water who emanate prophecies all night long.", she writes about Ocampo. and this perhaps seals the deal in this section:
"I pushed myself so much
to learn how to read
in my sobbing"
On this night, in this world
night holds fascination to us. to me its just weary reminder of inability to sleep few days a month. a clinical problem to which a cure doesn't exist. make what you will of this, "the one I wait for doesn’t come", and perhaps that's also the intent. what do we see in the darkest of the night? the deepest ugly desire? or paradise lost?
The short cantos
i will just leave these here:
"the center
of a poem
is another poem
the center of the center
is absence."
"no
words
do not make love
they make absence"
The Shadow Texts
and this is final section, knowing that this is the end, its a little saddening. however, its been a journey, a decade has passed. there has been silences, deaths, loss, heartaches and pieces of us are lost over time and we are now a whole new person. but, really, are we? "I want to exist as what I am: as a fixed idea. I want to bark, instead of praising the silence of the space you’re born into." so who are we? the self? the past and the present and a possible future? all the pieces of us that were given away to others, what happened to those? did they drown in oblivion when their owners died?
"decide for yourself:
either you get out or you stay
but don’t touch me like this,
with dread, with confusion,
either you leave or you get lost,
as for me, I just can’t anymore."
and we end here: "Will there be time to make myself a mask when I emerge from the shadows?"
The collection has been thoughtfully well put and there is a clear progression of thought and ideas with every page turn. Having it chronologically placed together also helps. It goes progressively heartbreaking seeing the tragedies strike, as she experiences multiple losses in life. She deals with all those by penning her thoughts on paper and in just few lines, the raw emotions find home.
Truly and absolutely stellar collection.
but Alejandra Pizarnik makes you pause, stop, halt, look away, take a breath, look at those four lines again, reach for the post-its and scribble it down hurriedly with a stubby pencil. it takes only thirty minutes to realize that you are going to run out of post-its and the pencil is going to get blunt and no lead remains to jot down more memorable moments from this collection. below are my notes.
Works and nights
they write this - "May your body always be a beloved space for revelations." how can I not grin foolishly at this? and this is where I wonder, "You announce yourself like thirst. ", where were you when you penned this down Alejandra, for this, of solitude, of night, of silence, of loneliness, of abandonment, just breaks my heart. and it continues, "because a face is calling, fitted to the darkness, a precious stone" in a more lonely way. there is a sense of longing for the things lost, of people gone - those who were once dear and near, not lovers but just, dear. She gives them a special mention, a space in hear heart and misses them and mourns for the space they left behind "the birds would draw small cages on my eyes". (damn, that's a fantastic line that i kept reading and reading and reading.) there is a line in future she writes, "They want to dusk me, they plan to death me. Help me not to ask for help."
there is just a lot of noise; outside of me, inside of me. so she says, "I stored up the purest words for making new silences." she continues to write more about silence. the very small space between absolute silence and bare minimal words necessary to communicate. the conflict of difference, of borders and of differences - "a thread of miserable union".
Extracting the stone of madness
there is a contrast of harshness and beauty coexisting and for the most part, it gives me vertigo. from the titular 'Vertigo', "This lilac unleaves.
It falls from itself
and hides its ancient shadow.
I will die of such things."
this section deliciously balances on this precarious note; "Coming up to eye level: silent figures, figures of desperation. Grey and heavy voices calling out from the former site of my heart." its heart racing, edge of the seat thriller variety but only in poetry fashion. can we get any less jarring than this? "To the autumn in the blue of a wall: be a comfort for the dead little girls." its probably the titular poem that stands out from everything else. "I speak the way I speak inside. ", she says. its the way the words sound, they come to and they translate to pen and paper that end up becoming poetry. its in the binges of writing and how they sound in mouth when they are said together in different ways in different times. its loud in silence, it whispers in death. it speaks of what you and i know. its the truth of what we know and what we don't. our fears, our loves, the instincts we ignore. she ends the entry with, "Why doesn’t anyone say anything? Why the great silence?" we are waiting for the other to talk. but neither of us talk.
A Musical Hell
"My name, my pronoun — a grey void.", of absences and memories. and there it is. this is what i was waiting for: "Metaphors of suffocation unbind from their shroud — the poem." isn't that true? hmm?
Uncollected Poems
a collection of yearning, perhaps. all of them has her yearning, wanting something bigger, greater than what the world had to offer. of distant future, of searching for what she knows is not coming - a different kind of vertigo she calls it. "Horror of searching for your eyes in the space that is full of the screams of this poem." - she says it all. i am very much surprised seeing Silvina Ocampo mentioned in a poem as she is a writer am reading currently. "I turn into water in your poem about water who emanate prophecies all night long.", she writes about Ocampo. and this perhaps seals the deal in this section:
"I pushed myself so much
to learn how to read
in my sobbing"
On this night, in this world
night holds fascination to us. to me its just weary reminder of inability to sleep few days a month. a clinical problem to which a cure doesn't exist. make what you will of this, "the one I wait for doesn’t come", and perhaps that's also the intent. what do we see in the darkest of the night? the deepest ugly desire? or paradise lost?
The short cantos
i will just leave these here:
"the center
of a poem
is another poem
the center of the center
is absence."
"no
words
do not make love
they make absence"
The Shadow Texts
and this is final section, knowing that this is the end, its a little saddening. however, its been a journey, a decade has passed. there has been silences, deaths, loss, heartaches and pieces of us are lost over time and we are now a whole new person. but, really, are we? "I want to exist as what I am: as a fixed idea. I want to bark, instead of praising the silence of the space you’re born into." so who are we? the self? the past and the present and a possible future? all the pieces of us that were given away to others, what happened to those? did they drown in oblivion when their owners died?
"decide for yourself:
either you get out or you stay
but don’t touch me like this,
with dread, with confusion,
either you leave or you get lost,
as for me, I just can’t anymore."
and we end here: "Will there be time to make myself a mask when I emerge from the shadows?"
The collection has been thoughtfully well put and there is a clear progression of thought and ideas with every page turn. Having it chronologically placed together also helps. It goes progressively heartbreaking seeing the tragedies strike, as she experiences multiple losses in life. She deals with all those by penning her thoughts on paper and in just few lines, the raw emotions find home.
Truly and absolutely stellar collection.
June 7, 2016
collecting ten years of poetry from her brief life, extracting the stone of madness is the most comprehensive selection of alejandra pizarnik's work currently available in english translation. featuring the argentine poet's final three collections (works and nights [los trabajos y las noches {1965}], extracting the stone of madness [extracción de la piedra de locura {1968}], and a musical hell [el infierno musical {1971}]), this bilingual edition also includes uncollected poems (1962-1972) and three posthumously published entries (on this night, in this world [en esta noche en este mundo], the short cantos [los pequeños cantos], and the shadow texts [textos de sombra]).
recipient of both a guggenheim fellowship and and a fulbright scholarship, pizarnik's life was tragically short – ending with an intentional barbiturate overdose at the age of 36. also a translator, playwright, and essayist, pizarnik, over the past few years (thanks to publications by new directions and ugly duckling), seems to be garnering some much-deserved attention in the anglophone world.
extracting the stone of madness offers pizarnik's poetry in all of its dark beauty and emotional fragility.exploring dwelling on themes of absence, death, silence, sadness, oblivion, loss, solitude, vulnerability, longing, fear, mystery, and madness, pizarnik's life was evidently one of great suffering. nonetheless, the art she created as a result, while often morose or dour, still blazes with a rarefied brilliance. revered by the likes of paz, cortázar, calvino, aira, and vila-matas, pizarnik isn't to be overlooked.
*rendered from the spanish by yvette siegert (translator and poet)
**see also vila-matas's wonderful essay on pizarnik from music & literature
recipient of both a guggenheim fellowship and and a fulbright scholarship, pizarnik's life was tragically short – ending with an intentional barbiturate overdose at the age of 36. also a translator, playwright, and essayist, pizarnik, over the past few years (thanks to publications by new directions and ugly duckling), seems to be garnering some much-deserved attention in the anglophone world.
extracting the stone of madness offers pizarnik's poetry in all of its dark beauty and emotional fragility.
unfounding
someone wanted to open a door. she felt pain in hands that were iron-cuffed to their prison of bad-omened bones.
all night she has struggled with her new shadow. it rained inside the dawn. it was pelted by mourners.
childhood clamors up from my crypted nights.
the music releases artless colors.
grey birds in the early morning are to the closed window what this poem is to my pain.
primitive eyes
where fear neither speaks in stories or poems, nor gives shape to terrors or triumphs.
my name, my pronoun — a grey void.
i'm familiar with the full range of fear. i know what it's like to start singing and to set off slowly through the narrow mountain pass that leads back to the stranger in me, to my own emigrant.
i write to ward off fear and the clawing wind that lodges in my throat.
and in the morning, when you are afraid of finding yourself dead (of there being no more images): the silence of compression, the silence of existence itself. this is how the years fly by. this is how we lost that beautiful animal happiness.
*rendered from the spanish by yvette siegert (translator and poet)
**see also vila-matas's wonderful essay on pizarnik from music & literature
April 10, 2025
Silence, space, death, words, blue flowers, lilacs.
I jotted down twenty occurrences of lilac (two in poem titles); I may have missed some. Often, but not always, associated with death.
I often found the prose poems more affecting that those in verse. With either, the surface meaning is not particularly clear or coherent, nor does it seem to matter. The poetry is a cascade of striking, often disturbing, images. Like Statius or Poe, it is more a matter of mood than meaning. The mood is the meaning.
-----------------------
In a Place for Escaping the Self
Space. A long wait.
No one comes. This shadow.
Give it what everyone gives:
meanings that are somber,
not full of wonder.
Space. Blazing silence.
What is it that shadows give each other?
-----------------------
Vertigo, or A Contemplation of Things That Come to an End
This lilac unleaves.
It falls from itself
and hides its ancient shadow.
I will die of such things.
------------------------
Reading Pizarnik, I am not surprised that she killed herself.
I jotted down twenty occurrences of lilac (two in poem titles); I may have missed some. Often, but not always, associated with death.
I often found the prose poems more affecting that those in verse. With either, the surface meaning is not particularly clear or coherent, nor does it seem to matter. The poetry is a cascade of striking, often disturbing, images. Like Statius or Poe, it is more a matter of mood than meaning. The mood is the meaning.
-----------------------
In a Place for Escaping the Self
Space. A long wait.
No one comes. This shadow.
Give it what everyone gives:
meanings that are somber,
not full of wonder.
Space. Blazing silence.
What is it that shadows give each other?
-----------------------
Vertigo, or A Contemplation of Things That Come to an End
This lilac unleaves.
It falls from itself
and hides its ancient shadow.
I will die of such things.
------------------------
Reading Pizarnik, I am not surprised that she killed herself.
June 15, 2023
“No es muda la muerte.”
Pizarnik siempre me atraviesa el pecho con una precisión descarnada y abrumadora pero que me conecta con la esencia misma de un sufrimiento que no me es ajeno. Sus versos, bellísimos, oscuros y dolidos, son el legado de un espíritu atormentado que escribió desde la desesperación y que, en ella, nos construyó un refugio a todos los que alguna vez anhelamos la muerte con el mismo fervor.
Donde sea que estés, Alejandra, si es que uno realmente está en algún lugar cuando cesa esta mundana existencia terrenal, donde estés, te quiero.
Pizarnik siempre me atraviesa el pecho con una precisión descarnada y abrumadora pero que me conecta con la esencia misma de un sufrimiento que no me es ajeno. Sus versos, bellísimos, oscuros y dolidos, son el legado de un espíritu atormentado que escribió desde la desesperación y que, en ella, nos construyó un refugio a todos los que alguna vez anhelamos la muerte con el mismo fervor.
Donde sea que estés, Alejandra, si es que uno realmente está en algún lugar cuando cesa esta mundana existencia terrenal, donde estés, te quiero.
February 3, 2019
I weigh myself in the language I use for weighing my dead.
In love with the words that create small nights in the uncreatedness of the day and its ferocious void.
February 6, 2017
“Y yo caminaría por todos los desiertos de este mundo y aun muerta te seguiría buscando, a ti, que fuiste el lugar del amor.”
Alejandra Pizarnik es la poeta de la muerte.
El desdoblamiento del yo y la imaginería surrealista son recursos utilizados constantemente para dar voz al dolor.
La antología de Visor libros que he leído reúne composiciones en verso y prosa poética de “La extracción de la piedra de locura” (1968), “La última inocencia” (1956), “Las aventuras perdidas” (1958), “��rbol de Diana” (1962), “Los trabajos y las noches”, “El infierno musical” (1971) y una selección de otros textos. Respecto a la extracción de la piedra de locura existe un cuadro de El Bosco de título casi idéntico que se exhibe en el Museo Nacional del Prado en el que se representa, satíricamente, a un pseudomédico del medievo intentando extirpar una piedra del cerebro de un loco. De ahí que resulte lógico pensar que la autora intente mediante la creación poética deshacerse de la angustia en la que vive aunque desgraciadamente acabará por no lograrlo suicidándose a los 36 años. “El infierno musical” (1971) aludiría al panel derecho de “El jardín de las Delicias” también de El Bosco.
A continuación una selección personal de poemas:
“sólo la sed
el silencio
ningún encuentro
cuídate de mí amor mío
cuídate de la silenciosa en el desierto
de la viajera con el vaso vacío
y de la sombra de su sombra”
“El poema que no digo,
el que no merezco.
Miedo de ser dos
camino del espejo:
alguien en mí dormido
me come y me bebe.”
(ambos de “Árbol de Diana”)
“En tu aniversario
Recibe este rostro mío, mudo, mendigo.
recibe este amor que te pido.
Recibe lo que hay en mí que eres tú.”
“Tu voz
Emboscado en mi escritura
cantas en mi poema.
Rehén de tu dulce voz
petrificada en mi memoria.
Pájaro asido a su fuga.
Aire tatuado por un ausente.
Reloj que late conmigo
para que nunca despierte.”
“Presencia
tu voz
en este no poder salirse de las cosas
de mi mirada
ellas me desposeen
hacen de mí un barco sobre un río de piedras
si no es tu voz
lluvia sola en mi silencio de fiebres
tú me desatas los ojos
y por favor que me hables
siempre”
“Del otro lado
Años y minutos hacen el amor.
Máscaras verdes bajo la lluvia.
Iglesia de vitrales obscenos.
Huella azul en la pared.
No conozco.
No reconozco.
Oscuro. Silencio.”
(los cuatro de “Los trabajos y las noches”)
Por último, me ha entusiasmado este artículo por descubrirnos detalles de su vida personal, como que le encantaban los cuadernos y los artículos de papelería (fijación que comparto desde que era una cría sin que desaparezca por el paso del tiempo), motivo por el que Cortázar hasta le escribió unos versos; su sentido del humor del que disfrutaron los amigos, aspecto que sorprende mucho por la temática de sus poemas; o cuestiones relativas a su sexualidad, tema misterioso y con el que, parece ser, le gustaba jugar.
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sup...
October 21, 2022
(a reread, rating stands, initial review stands)
This time around what stood out most was the poem On This Night, In This World, posthumously published and written for the journalist Martha Isabel Moia. Beautiful concepts expressed beautifully.
On This Night, In This World
(bits and pieces of it)
on this night in this world
nothing is ever what you wish to say
the tongue is an organ of knowledge
about the failure of every poem
castrated by its own tongue
which is the organ of re-creation
of re-cognition
but not of resurrection
of the thing as negation
no
words
do not make love
they make absence
if i said water, would i drink?
on this night in this world
the thing about the mind is it doesn't see itself
the thing about the spirit is it doesn't see itself
my person is wounded
my first-person singular
i write as one who raises a knife in the dark
in breakdown of words
abandoning the palace of language
and the hound of maldoror*
on this night in this world
where anything is possible
except for
a poem
oh help me write the most dispensable poem
that can't even be used
to be useless
help me write words
on this night in this world.
*The Songs of Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont.
Initial review:
I finally understand the meaning of very good modern poetry. Alejandra Pizarnik was born in Buenos Aires to Russian parents fleeing WWII, a writer that spoke from a place of deep power within, an Anne Carson meets Sylvia Plath. She has an Intimate command of language, Borges would have approved.
SMALL PROSE POEM
There comes a day when poetry is made without language, a day when the great and small desires that were scattered in verses are called together, are gathered up suddenly by two eyes, the same ones that I so worshipped in the frenzied absence of the blank page. In love with the words that create small nights in the uncreatedness of the day and its ferocious void.
SUMMER GOODBYES
The soft rumour of spreading weeds.
The sound of things ruined by the wind.
They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists.
I would like to be dead and also to go inside another heart.
This time around what stood out most was the poem On This Night, In This World, posthumously published and written for the journalist Martha Isabel Moia. Beautiful concepts expressed beautifully.
On This Night, In This World
(bits and pieces of it)
on this night in this world
nothing is ever what you wish to say
the tongue is an organ of knowledge
about the failure of every poem
castrated by its own tongue
which is the organ of re-creation
of re-cognition
but not of resurrection
of the thing as negation
no
words
do not make love
they make absence
if i said water, would i drink?
on this night in this world
the thing about the mind is it doesn't see itself
the thing about the spirit is it doesn't see itself
my person is wounded
my first-person singular
i write as one who raises a knife in the dark
in breakdown of words
abandoning the palace of language
and the hound of maldoror*
on this night in this world
where anything is possible
except for
a poem
oh help me write the most dispensable poem
that can't even be used
to be useless
help me write words
on this night in this world.
*The Songs of Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont.
Initial review:
I finally understand the meaning of very good modern poetry. Alejandra Pizarnik was born in Buenos Aires to Russian parents fleeing WWII, a writer that spoke from a place of deep power within, an Anne Carson meets Sylvia Plath. She has an Intimate command of language, Borges would have approved.
SMALL PROSE POEM
There comes a day when poetry is made without language, a day when the great and small desires that were scattered in verses are called together, are gathered up suddenly by two eyes, the same ones that I so worshipped in the frenzied absence of the blank page. In love with the words that create small nights in the uncreatedness of the day and its ferocious void.
SUMMER GOODBYES
The soft rumour of spreading weeds.
The sound of things ruined by the wind.
They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists.
I would like to be dead and also to go inside another heart.
August 1, 2023
'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).
April 22, 2025
When I was younger I devoured everything I could get my hands on by Roberto Bolaño. He was a prolific name dropper; because of that I have been turned on to many great books & authors. However, I must have missed his praise for Alejandra Pizarnik, whom he revered. What a bummer!
This book is insane & spoke to me on an intimate level rarely broached in my reading & writing of poetry. She writes with the same acute perception & intensity as Rimbaud, turning phrases with so much depth you can suck the marrow out them & be satisfied for a lifetime.
The title poem, “Extracting The Stone of Madness” is a reference to a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. It reminds of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell (a personal favorite). Her sadness and craft are transformed into a collage of forest and fog that wraps itself around you with preternatural shadow & light, in the morning and during the darkest part of the evening.
She took her own life when she was 36. More’s the pity!
Rather than type out whole poems, I am just picking out random lines as I flip through the book. I will be referencing this collection for the rest of life. Enjoy!
The night is the color of the eyelids of the dead.
The name I was called by is already lost
Its face orbits around me
Like the sounds of water at night,
Of waters falling into waters.
And the last thing to go is its smile,
Instead of my memory
The light of the wind through the pines: do I understand such signs of incandescent sadness?
To fall like a wounded animal into a place that was meant for revelations.
The night is shaped like a howling wolf.
Something falling into the silence. My final word was I, but by this I meant the luminous dawn.
A moment of ecstasy for me, heir to every forbidden garden.
What I want is to honor the keeper of my shadow, the one who draws names and shapes out of nothing.
Gust of light in my bones when I write the word earth. A word or presence, followed by perfumed animals – as sad as itself, as beautiful as suicide – and it soars over me like a dynasty of sons.
Before words can run out, something in the heart must die
All these fragments rend me.
Solitude is not being able to articulate the solitude, being unable to circumvent it, unable to give it a face, unable to make it a synonym for any landscape. Solitude would be this torn melody of my phrases.
Bits of sorcery emanate from the new core of a poem that isn't meant for anyone. I speak with a voice that lies beyond the voice and let out the potent cries of a mourner for hire. A blue glance has cast a halo around my poem. O life, what have you done to this life of mine?
This book is insane & spoke to me on an intimate level rarely broached in my reading & writing of poetry. She writes with the same acute perception & intensity as Rimbaud, turning phrases with so much depth you can suck the marrow out them & be satisfied for a lifetime.
The title poem, “Extracting The Stone of Madness” is a reference to a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. It reminds of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell (a personal favorite). Her sadness and craft are transformed into a collage of forest and fog that wraps itself around you with preternatural shadow & light, in the morning and during the darkest part of the evening.
She took her own life when she was 36. More’s the pity!
Rather than type out whole poems, I am just picking out random lines as I flip through the book. I will be referencing this collection for the rest of life. Enjoy!
The night is the color of the eyelids of the dead.
The name I was called by is already lost
Its face orbits around me
Like the sounds of water at night,
Of waters falling into waters.
And the last thing to go is its smile,
Instead of my memory
The light of the wind through the pines: do I understand such signs of incandescent sadness?
To fall like a wounded animal into a place that was meant for revelations.
The night is shaped like a howling wolf.
Something falling into the silence. My final word was I, but by this I meant the luminous dawn.
A moment of ecstasy for me, heir to every forbidden garden.
What I want is to honor the keeper of my shadow, the one who draws names and shapes out of nothing.
Gust of light in my bones when I write the word earth. A word or presence, followed by perfumed animals – as sad as itself, as beautiful as suicide – and it soars over me like a dynasty of sons.
Before words can run out, something in the heart must die
All these fragments rend me.
Solitude is not being able to articulate the solitude, being unable to circumvent it, unable to give it a face, unable to make it a synonym for any landscape. Solitude would be this torn melody of my phrases.
Bits of sorcery emanate from the new core of a poem that isn't meant for anyone. I speak with a voice that lies beyond the voice and let out the potent cries of a mourner for hire. A blue glance has cast a halo around my poem. O life, what have you done to this life of mine?
April 3, 2023
Extração da Pedra da Loucura é meu livro favorito da Pizarnik desde que li a sua Poesía Completa, essa releitura proporcionada pela tradução do Davi Diniz nesta edição Bilíngue da Relicário só comprovou isso.
Por mais que dominamos a língua original dos nossos poetas a serem lidos, há sempre algo que se perde na nossa mente, sou das apoiadores que poesia é intraduzível, mas sempre sei que na releitura dos tradutores surge algo que nos passou desapercebido na leitura original. Isso aconteceu aqui também com o Diniz, não só os livros que ele têm traduzido da Pizarnik nos trazem uma releitura magnífica, seus posfácios nos colocam num outro patamar na linguagem da poeta.
Um outro momento brilhante do livro é o prefácio da estudioso de Pizarnik e também poeta igualmente esplendorosa Nina Rizzi, está que também trará a prosa da Pizarnik pela Relicário ainda em 2023 - pelo menos nós torcemos por isso.
Por mais que dominamos a língua original dos nossos poetas a serem lidos, há sempre algo que se perde na nossa mente, sou das apoiadores que poesia é intraduzível, mas sempre sei que na releitura dos tradutores surge algo que nos passou desapercebido na leitura original. Isso aconteceu aqui também com o Diniz, não só os livros que ele têm traduzido da Pizarnik nos trazem uma releitura magnífica, seus posfácios nos colocam num outro patamar na linguagem da poeta.
Um outro momento brilhante do livro é o prefácio da estudioso de Pizarnik e também poeta igualmente esplendorosa Nina Rizzi, está que também trará a prosa da Pizarnik pela Relicário ainda em 2023 - pelo menos nós torcemos por isso.
December 8, 2023
Hermanas, it's happening.
Tuve el impulso de leer alguno de los libros de Pizarnik completos y acá estamos. Creo que arranqué por uno complicado, pero no por eso dejó de ser una experiencia fascinante. Recomiendo citarlo en voz alta, el poder de invocación que genera Alejandra es impresionante, bruja total. Artistaza.
Tuve el impulso de leer alguno de los libros de Pizarnik completos y acá estamos. Creo que arranqué por uno complicado, pero no por eso dejó de ser una experiencia fascinante. Recomiendo citarlo en voz alta, el poder de invocación que genera Alejandra es impresionante, bruja total. Artistaza.
July 14, 2025
maldita. agora quem precisa extrair a pedra da loucura sou eu.
April 5, 2018
I have been trying for months to find the right words to describe Pizarnik's poetry. I give up.
(extraordinary)
(extraordinary)
June 27, 2016
When you look at me
my eyes are keys,
the wall holds secrets,
and my fear carries words, poems.
Only you can turn my memory
into a fascinated traveler,
a relentless fire.
*
You speak like the night.
You announce yourself like thirst.
*
on the other edge of the night
love is possible
take me there
take me to the sweet essences
that die each day in your memory
*
I stored up the purest words
for making new silences
*
In my eyes I’ve lost everything.
Asking is so far away. And so close, this knowledge of want.
*
What I want from this poem is the loosening of my throat.
*
No one can save me. I’m invisible even to myself. Here I am, calling to myself with your voice.
my eyes are keys,
the wall holds secrets,
and my fear carries words, poems.
Only you can turn my memory
into a fascinated traveler,
a relentless fire.
*
You speak like the night.
You announce yourself like thirst.
*
on the other edge of the night
love is possible
take me there
take me to the sweet essences
that die each day in your memory
*
I stored up the purest words
for making new silences
*
In my eyes I’ve lost everything.
Asking is so far away. And so close, this knowledge of want.
*
What I want from this poem is the loosening of my throat.
*
No one can save me. I’m invisible even to myself. Here I am, calling to myself with your voice.
January 20, 2020
Pizarnik is one of surrealism's constellations, not a minor voice translated for holiday commerce. Her poems are like trails of kisses on a mirror; this is an autobiographical search for her own coherence, an understanding of self through her lineage.
"DWELLING PLACES"
For Theodore Faenkel
In the stiff hand of a dead man,
in the memory of a madman,
in the sadness of a child,
in the hand that feels for a glass,
in the unreachable glass,
in the endless thirst"
"HOUSE OF THE MIND"
the mind's house
rebuilt letter by letter
word by word
in my double paper figure
crosses the sea of ink
to give new form
to a new feeling
it opens its mouth
green and rootless,
the word without its body
a new musical order
of colors of bodies of excess
of small forms
that move scream say never
the night says never
the night utters me
in a poem"
Unfortunately the poet seems unable to find her way out of one of the arcane avenues that an art form based on an infinite formula can offer (that and poverty). She passed away in 1972. There is not one false step or insincerity in her poetry.
"DWELLING PLACES"
For Theodore Faenkel
In the stiff hand of a dead man,
in the memory of a madman,
in the sadness of a child,
in the hand that feels for a glass,
in the unreachable glass,
in the endless thirst"
"HOUSE OF THE MIND"
the mind's house
rebuilt letter by letter
word by word
in my double paper figure
crosses the sea of ink
to give new form
to a new feeling
it opens its mouth
green and rootless,
the word without its body
a new musical order
of colors of bodies of excess
of small forms
that move scream say never
the night says never
the night utters me
in a poem"
Unfortunately the poet seems unable to find her way out of one of the arcane avenues that an art form based on an infinite formula can offer (that and poverty). She passed away in 1972. There is not one false step or insincerity in her poetry.
February 26, 2019
Alejandra Pizarnik is one of the greatest poets of the 20th c
Deaf Lantern
The absent figures are sighing, and the night is thick. The night is
the color of the eyelids of the dead.
All night long I make the night. All night long I write. Word by
word I am writing the night.
Deaf Lantern
The absent figures are sighing, and the night is thick. The night is
the color of the eyelids of the dead.
All night long I make the night. All night long I write. Word by
word I am writing the night.
July 20, 2021
"Y yo caminaría por todos los desiertos de este mundo y aun muerta te seguiría buscando, a ti, que fuiste el lugar del amor."
October 26, 2023
Pizarnik traz em seu "Extração da pedra da loucura" temas recorrentes como o nascimento, a morte, o sonho, a noite, a loucura, as bonecas (a inocência, talvez), formas de expressão da sua vivência e dor interiores. Pizarnik foi diagnosticada como esquizofrênica e seus textos parecem carregar como uma aceitação do inexorável, o fim, uma forma talvez de superar o que não pode controlar em si.
(...)
Muñequita de papel, yo la recorté en papel celeste, verde, rojo, y se quedó en el suelo, en el máximo de la carencia de relieves y de dimensiones. En medio del camino te incrustaron, figurita errante, estás en el medio del camino y nadie te distingue pues no te diferencias del suelo aun si a veces gritas, pero hay tantas cosas que gritan en un camino ¿por qué irían a ver qué significa esa mancha verde, celeste, roja?
Si fuertemente, a sangre y fuego, se graban mis imágenes, sin sonidos, sin colores, ni siquiera lo blanco. Si se intensifica el rastro de los animales nocturnos en las inscripciones de mis huesos. Si me afinco en el lugar del recuerdo como una criatura se atiene a la saliente de una montaña y al más pequeño movimiento hecho de olvido cae —hablo de lo irremediable, pido lo irremediable—, el cuerpo desatado y los huesos desparramados en el silencio de la nieve traidora. Proyectada hacia el regreso, cúbreme con una mortaja lila. Y luego cántame una canción de una ternura sin precedentes, una canción que no diga de la vida ni de la muerte sino de gestos levísimos como el más imperceptible ademán de aquiescencia, una canción que sea menos que una canción, una canción como un dibujo que representa una pequeña casa debajo de un sol al que le faltan algunos rayos; allí ha de poder vivir la muñequita de papel verde, celeste y rojo; allí se ha de poder erguir y tal vez andar en su casita dibujada sobre una página en blanco. (Noche compartida en el recuerdo de una huida)
(...)
Muñequita de papel, yo la recorté en papel celeste, verde, rojo, y se quedó en el suelo, en el máximo de la carencia de relieves y de dimensiones. En medio del camino te incrustaron, figurita errante, estás en el medio del camino y nadie te distingue pues no te diferencias del suelo aun si a veces gritas, pero hay tantas cosas que gritan en un camino ¿por qué irían a ver qué significa esa mancha verde, celeste, roja?
Si fuertemente, a sangre y fuego, se graban mis imágenes, sin sonidos, sin colores, ni siquiera lo blanco. Si se intensifica el rastro de los animales nocturnos en las inscripciones de mis huesos. Si me afinco en el lugar del recuerdo como una criatura se atiene a la saliente de una montaña y al más pequeño movimiento hecho de olvido cae —hablo de lo irremediable, pido lo irremediable—, el cuerpo desatado y los huesos desparramados en el silencio de la nieve traidora. Proyectada hacia el regreso, cúbreme con una mortaja lila. Y luego cántame una canción de una ternura sin precedentes, una canción que no diga de la vida ni de la muerte sino de gestos levísimos como el más imperceptible ademán de aquiescencia, una canción que sea menos que una canción, una canción como un dibujo que representa una pequeña casa debajo de un sol al que le faltan algunos rayos; allí ha de poder vivir la muñequita de papel verde, celeste y rojo; allí se ha de poder erguir y tal vez andar en su casita dibujada sobre una página en blanco. (Noche compartida en el recuerdo de una huida)
January 17, 2024
Te quiero, Pizarnik. Te quiero.
July 1, 2024
i cried in a small child’s abandon to this. it’s sliced my jugular and left no oesophageal crumbs. and on the other of the hands, that i claim as both when shadow, everything in her poetry is cunt. that’s is, if cunt were lilacs, lost childhood dreams, staring at the wall and reading Maldoror (this is as cunty served on a wolfish grey silver platter in the garden of desire that is just out of reach as it gets). by her own admission and admissions to the grippy sock ward she is — the mahatma gandhi of tonguing, the Einstein of eating pussy, the Reich of cunnilingus, the Reik of clearing a path through the bush like grubby rabbis!!! and then there are the tears that followed and came via the ancient pathways in every depressed woman called mad. the cure of folly is extracting the stone, words that carry that weight so silence can continue to do its thing.
November 1, 2021
"Alguien mide sollozando
la extensión del alba.
Alguien apuñala la almohada
en busca de su imposible
lugar de reposo."
Debido a algunos fragmentos que conocí mediante twitter, Alejandra Pizarnik me llamó la atención y si bien mi intención era aventurarme con Diarios, en la biblioteca solo pude conseguir este volumen.
Alejandra Pizarnik es un soplo de aire fresco, se aleja de la típica imagen "bonita y amorosa" que tenemos de la poesía para darnos unos párrafos desgarradores llenos de soledad y sufrimiento. Confieso que le he bajado la nota debido a algunos textos hacia el final del libro, que me han dejado un tanto fría y desconcertada pero gracias a La condesa sangrienta y como narra Alejandra esos terribles sucesos, ha conseguido que se lleve unas más que merecidas cuatro estrellas.
"Emboscado en mi escritura
cantas en mi poema.
Rehén de tu dulce voz
petrificada en mi memoria.
Pájaro asido a tu fuga.
Aire tatuado por un ausente.
Reloj que late conmigo
para que nunca despierte."
la extensión del alba.
Alguien apuñala la almohada
en busca de su imposible
lugar de reposo."
Debido a algunos fragmentos que conocí mediante twitter, Alejandra Pizarnik me llamó la atención y si bien mi intención era aventurarme con Diarios, en la biblioteca solo pude conseguir este volumen.
Alejandra Pizarnik es un soplo de aire fresco, se aleja de la típica imagen "bonita y amorosa" que tenemos de la poesía para darnos unos párrafos desgarradores llenos de soledad y sufrimiento. Confieso que le he bajado la nota debido a algunos textos hacia el final del libro, que me han dejado un tanto fría y desconcertada pero gracias a La condesa sangrienta y como narra Alejandra esos terribles sucesos, ha conseguido que se lleve unas más que merecidas cuatro estrellas.
"Emboscado en mi escritura
cantas en mi poema.
Rehén de tu dulce voz
petrificada en mi memoria.
Pájaro asido a tu fuga.
Aire tatuado por un ausente.
Reloj que late conmigo
para que nunca despierte."
September 23, 2023
“everything is an interior. i just came here to see the garden.”
and perhaps, in the elucidation of this garden, comes the profoundness that is inextricably simple: that language fails to bridge. Pizarnik, wishes to extract the stone of madness, and to see the garden she wishes to see. nothing, but blows.
favorite poems : of things unseen, gesture of an object from a musical hell.
and perhaps, in the elucidation of this garden, comes the profoundness that is inextricably simple: that language fails to bridge. Pizarnik, wishes to extract the stone of madness, and to see the garden she wishes to see. nothing, but blows.
favorite poems : of things unseen, gesture of an object from a musical hell.
January 4, 2017
A morte restituiu ao silêncio o seu prestígio sedutor. E eu não direi o meu poema e eu hei-de dizê-lo. Mesmo que o poema (aqui, agora) não tenha sentido, não tenha destino.
March 25, 2022
5 estrelles perquè: és la Pizarnik i no es mereix menys; és poesia; i aquí ens agrada tot allò angoixant fins a dir prou.
Embriagada i corpresa per la sensibilitat i capacitat per transmetre, a través d’un llenguatge extremadament poètic, tant de patiment i tanta solitud. Tant, que sembla que cada poema t’hagi d’arrencar l’ànima.
No es pot explicar ni ressenyar, a la Pizarnik se l’ha de llegir i deixar sentir aquí dins.
«La muerte siempre al lado.
Escucho su decir.
Sólo me oigo.»
«La soledad no es estar parada en el muelle, a la madrugada, mirando el agua con avidez. La soledad es no poder decirla por no poder circundarla por no poder darle un rostro por no poder hacerla sinónimo de un paisaje.»
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
I feel you, Alejandra.
Send moixaines.
Embriagada i corpresa per la sensibilitat i capacitat per transmetre, a través d’un llenguatge extremadament poètic, tant de patiment i tanta solitud. Tant, que sembla que cada poema t’hagi d’arrencar l’ànima.
No es pot explicar ni ressenyar, a la Pizarnik se l’ha de llegir i deixar sentir aquí dins.
«La muerte siempre al lado.
Escucho su decir.
Sólo me oigo.»
«La soledad no es estar parada en el muelle, a la madrugada, mirando el agua con avidez. La soledad es no poder decirla por no poder circundarla por no poder darle un rostro por no poder hacerla sinónimo de un paisaje.»
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
I feel you, Alejandra.
Send moixaines.
June 28, 2021
I wanted a perfect silence.
This is why I speak.
This is why I speak.
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