The poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) is, undoubtedly, a universe of anguish, solitude, and a constant search for identity and language. The edition of her Complete Poetry, which compiles her vast poetic production, presents a unique opportunity to approach one of the most enigmatic and profound voices in 20th-century Latin American literature. Her work not only reflects a disturbing view of the human condition but is also infused with a biography marked by suffering, discomfort, and incompleteness, making her poetry even richer and more complex.

Pizarnik was born in Buenos Aires in 1936 to a family of Russian immigrants. From an early age,
she stood out as a restless and sensitive child, but also as someone who struggled with her inner demons, an experience that would be reflected in her work. Her poetry, laden with dark images and a constant use of silence, suggests a deep discomfort with the external world and a disconnection from her surroundings. This is evident when she writes:

I will not say it. Even I, or especially I, betray myself.
Like a nursing child, I have silenced my soul.
I no longer know how to speak.
I can no longer speak.
I have unraveled what was given to me, which was all I had.
And it is death once more. It looms over me,
it is my only horizon.

This sense of alienation, which the author experienced since childhood, becomes the core of her poetic universe. The themes of existential anguish, emptiness, and death are present in every verse, creating a dense and overwhelming atmosphere.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Complete Poetry is the evolution of Pizarnik's poetic voice over the years. In her early poems, the author plays with formal experimentation and more fluid language but soon delves into a deeper and more austere darkness. The contrast between her initial style, where she still allows for some openness, and the final texts, more torn and desolate, reflects her own emotional transformation and her continuous descent into introspection. In particular, her last poems, written before her tragic death at 36, show an even more distressing poetry, where the disappearance of language and the representation of voice become evident, suggesting the idea of writing that vanishes into its own void.

The deepest love will disappear forever.
What can we love that isn’t a shadow?
The sacred dreams of childhood have already died,
and so has nature, the one I loved.

It's impossible to discuss Pizarnik's poetry without referring to her relationship with madness, death, and the need for expression. Throughout her life, Pizarnik suffered from psychological problems, periods of deep depression, and stays in psychiatric institutions, elements that are clearly reflected in her work. The poet herself acknowledged that her poetry was a way to confront her deepest fears, a desperate cry to give shape to her most incomprehensible emotions. Her life was marked by a constant struggle with the desire to communicate the unnameable, that which escapes language. In her Complete Poetry, this impulse is palpable: the author seeks not only to express her pain but rather to turn that pain into an aesthetic experience that transforms suffering into beauty through words, such as in:

Now I understand the truth
It bursts in my desires
and in my sorrows,
in my missed connections,
in my imbalances,
in my deliriums.

Now I understand the truth.

Now,
to seek life.

A fundamental aspect of Pizarnik's poetry is her handling of silence and absence. In her poems, emptiness is a constant presence, and the poet approaches it as a space where words and meanings dissolve. Her obsession with silence, present in titles such as Hunger, The Bloody Countess, or The Lost Adventures, could be interpreted as a reflection of her struggle to find a voice that was neither completely fragmented nor overwhelmed by extreme emotions. The poet, while delving into her own darkness, seeks light in the very process of writing, in the possibility of saying what, at first, seems unrepeatable.

Pizarnik also has a special relationship with French literature, especially with symbolism and surrealism, which is reflected in her style and the construction of her poetic universe. The influence of authors like Antonin Artaud and René Char is perceived in the intensity of her images and the rupture of narrative logic. In many of her poems, language becomes an instrument that undoes reality and reconfigures it, transforming the mundane into the absurd and the dark into the sublime. We see this blurring of reality in lines like:

It was blue like her hand in the instant of death.

It was her clenched hand, it was the final orgasm.

It was her cock erect like a bird awaiting rain, erect to receive her,

death, the lover (or not).

The edition of Complete Poetry not only allows for a linear reading of her work but invites a deep reflection on Pizarnik's life and death. The combination of her tragic biography, her unbreakable search for meaning through language, and her mastery of lyric poetry makes this work a cornerstone of contemporary poetry in Spanish. With each verse, Pizarnik offers an intima testimony of her suffering, but also of her exceptional ability to transform that experience into something universal. Her poetry stands as a bridge between personal pain and the possibility of finding meaning amid darkness, a work that, for its beauty and intensity, remains a beacon for future generations. She writes:

I never found a soulmate. No one was a dream.
They left me with open dreams,
with my central wound exposed,
with my gash.

Alejandra Pizarnik's Complete Poetry is an essential book for those who wish to understand not only the evolution of her style but also the complex link between the author's life and the depth of her work. This anthology ultimately becomes a testimony of resistance against the ineffable, an act of literary beauty born from human suffering and fragility.