Diana’s Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik and translated by Yvette Siegert

This is poetry from Argentina.

Diana’s Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik translated by Yvette Siegert is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Spanish. This was published in 2014.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781937027353E12.

Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diana’s Tree, translated by Yvette Siegert, is one of those small books that feels much larger than its physical shape. Pizarnik’s poems rarely waste motion. They move through absence, selfhood, night, childhood, and desire with an almost frightening compression, as though each line has been asked to hold more silence than language should reasonably carry. Siegert’s translation keeps that pressure intact without making the poems feel sealed away from the reader. A person could come to this book for its place in Argentine poetry, its intimacy with surrealist and existential traditions, or its importance to later poets of the fragment. But the real reason to stay is simpler and stranger: Pizarnik gives permission to ask questions about the self that do not resolve into answers. The poems remain open wounds of attention.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.