Ova Completa

Book excerpt: 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