Materia Prima

Amanda Berenguer (ed. Kristin Dykstra and Kent Johnson)

This 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 seven of her books—Materia Prima (1966), Composición de Lugar (1976), Identidad de ciertas frutas (1983), La dama de Elche (1985), La botella verde (1995), La cuidadora del fuego (2010)—and from a book of selected poems from 1968-1984, Con el tigre entre las cosas (2002). A special section of this edition is dedicated to her visual poems, including pieces that appeared in magazines in the early 1970s.