Materia Prima

by Amanda Berenguer

Materia Prima is the first English-language collection of Amanda Berenguer’s poetry. A key contributor to Uruguay’s famed literary Generación del 45, Berenguer (1921-2010) stands among the most important post-World War II poets of Latin America, along with her now-legendary compatriot Marosa di Giorgio. Berenguer’s poetry, stylistically and conceptually varied, ranges from classic, measured lyric to Dickinson-inspired gnomic utterance; from metaphysical and erotic rhetorical effusion to condensed and radically concrete experiment; from seemingly apolitical languor to pointed ideological dissent. The poems included in this edition span a large portion of Berenguer’s career and are taken from eight books, and an additional section dedicated to her visual poems.

This collection is edited by Kristin Dykstra and Kent Johnson, with translations by Gillian Brassil, Anna Deeny Morales, Mónica de la Torre, Kristin Dykstra, Kent Johnson, Urayoán Noel, Jeannine Marie Pitas, and Alex Verdolini.

The volume also includes an introduction by Roberto Echavarren and an interview conducted by Silvia Guerra.

Genres: Poetry

272 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2019

About the author

Amanda Berenguer (1921–2010) was a vital presence in Uruguayan literary life for more than six decades. She is a key figure in the “Generation of 1945,” known around the world for its energetic experimentation. Her first book appeared in Montevideo in 1940, followed by a steady stream of collections recognized for their excellence. Awards for her contributions included, among many others, the prestigious international Casa de las Américas Prize for Poetry (1986) and two national Uruguayan prizes for her collection La dama de Elche. Berenguer’s lifelong dedication to the arts included work with little presses and radio programming, as well as collaborations with dancers and musicians. She is widely regarded, in her country and beyond, as one of Uruguay’s greatest poets.

Reviews

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amanda Berenguer, from the Generation of 1945, is widely regarded as one of Uruguay’s greatest poets. Materia Prima presents translations from eight of her compendious and experimental books for the first time in English. Berenguer’s boundless lexical depths and fascinations feel encyclopaedic: there are sprawling, modular poems about Magellanic clouds and Möbius strips, poems dedicated to Emily Dickinson, The Lady of Elche or to the asses in paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, avant-garde visual and hand-written poems, aphorisms about wrinkles, still lifes of fruit, as well as a general attraction to physics, chemistry and astronomy. Every book has its own wonderful mutability and unique register yet Berenguer’s style always possesses a confidence, an ability to merge existentialism with levity. Her poetic language is sharply-angled towards the vastness of space where the "buzz of the galaxy’s background noise" is likened to a "saw endlessly preparing the tree of silence". That distance between the object and the poet becomes an impossible dimension to properly perceive: like the Klein bottle, with its non-orientable surface, Berenguer’s work is always interrogating the qualias and differences between the exterior and the interior, between the real and the imagined. Sadly, no complete collection of Berenguer’s oeuvre exists yet in English - however Materia Prima showcases an impressive, if not entirely filling, sample of her career. These selected poems are just a small part of her luminous universe, one that is masterfully expanding out into the infinite where her "word[s] written—in the present [are] travelling across time".

[Kate Durbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Another unforgettable thing that led me to write was one time when I turned a corner and saw a dead dog at the side of the road. That dead dog, swollen with a little thread of dirty water running out of him...People were passing by and no one else took any notice, but I experienced a kind of fall into nothingness. Something opened up in me, a feeling that I cam to know again and again, many times over. Afterwards I went home and wrote something about that sensation I had just experienced." -Amanda Berenguer

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s no question to me that Berenguer is a master.

She has a way of engaging with science and math, then jumps to exacting essences of fruit without usual descriptions, studies wrinkles in 55 sections, considers the altering aspects of bottles, and approaches the supernatural with Emily Dickinson language use.

This book is a beautiful edition as well, giving us a carefully designed glimpse into Berenguer’s works. Ugly Duckling Presse has given readers a beautiful sense of Amanda Berenguer, including her visual poetry, with some text in various colors.

[Isaac Salazar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection felt very fragmented to me, and this is coming from someone who writes the same way. As much as I didn’t know what Berenguer was talking about sometimes, I didn’t get the sense that she didn’t. I respect that, and I do recommend this book for the open-minded.

[Sarkis Antonyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

my hydroflask is probably a sexual being

[Klara Plessis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most exceptional book I've read this year.