Revered by the likes of Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolano, Alejandra
Pizarnik is still a hidden treasure in the U.S. Extracting the Stone of
Madness: Poems 1962-1972 comprises all of her middle to late work, as
well as a selection of posthumously published verse. Obsessed with
themes of solitude, childhood, madness and death, Pizarnik explored the
shifting valences of the self and the border between speech and silence.
In her own words, she was drawn to the suffering of Baudelaire, the
suicide of Nerval, the premature silence of Rimbaud, the mysterious and
fleeting presence of Lautréamont," as well as to the "unparalleled
intensity" of Artaud's "physical and moral suffering."