Description
Poetry. Afterword by María Negroni. Translated by Rebekah Smith. Susana Thénon (1935–1991) is a key poet of the '60s generation in Argentina. In OVA COMPLETA, her final, most radical collection, Thénon's poetics expands to incorporate all it touches—classical and popular culture, lyrics to songs and vulgarities, incoherence and musicality—embodying humor and terror while writing obliquely of femicide, Argentina's last dictatorship, the Malvinas / Falklands war, the heritage of colonialism. Or, as Thénon writes, "me on earth; me with the others; me ignorant, rude, all mixed in Latin, Greek, shit, noodles, culture and barbarism..." OVA COMPLETA is a collection full of stylistic innovation, language play, dark humor, and socio-political insight, now available to English-language readers for the first time.
"A fragmented textual surface, a language all too common, a violent humor, and a voice multiple and heterogeneous."—Delfina Muschietti
"Experiments with language, with writing, with discursive genres, with situations and communicative actions or with pragmatic effects ... a bleak and acidic gaze on a world that 'enduring—until when?—it destroys itself' and that incessantly longs to see reconstruction rising up over destruction."—Ana María Barrenechea
Author Bio
Susana Thénon was a poet, translator, and photographer. She is considered part of the Argentine generation of the 60s, alongside contemporaries Alejandra Pizarnik and Juana Bignozzi, though she was never formally aligned with any particular group. She published five books of poetry: Edad sin tregua (1958), Habitante de la nada (1959), De lugares extraños (1967), Distancias (1984), and Ova completa (1987). Between her publications of 1967 and 1984, she took a break from poetry, focusing instead on photography, especially photography of the dancer Iris Scaccheri. One of these photos appears on the cover of her book, Distancias, and a book Acerca de Iris Scaccheri was published in Buenos Aires by Ediciones Anzilotti in 1988. Distancias was translated into English by Renata Treitel and published by Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, CA) in 1994. Thénon's work was collected and published in two volumes entitled La morada imposible, edited by Ana M. Barrenechea and María Negroni (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 2001). Some of her poems have also appeared in English in the collections, The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), The Helicon Nine Reader (Kansas City: Helicon Nine Editions, 1990), and Crossings (San Francisco: Center for Art in Translation, 2000).
Author City: BUENOS AIRES ARG
Rebekah Smith is a writer, editor, and translator based in New York City.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA