Poetry
Ocre
Not translated into English
Alfonsina Storni · 1925
Synopsis
A collection made almost entirely of sonnets, in which the poet breaks with her earlier work: a cultural radio station in Bogotá sees her leaving behind the last echoes of modernism and lovers' laments, in favour of greater freedom and irony. The poems question the roles imposed on women, express the disenchantment that follows love and abandonment, and the struggle for autonomy.
Context
Published in Buenos Aires by Babel in 1925, according to the BnF, the collection marks, for a Colombian cultural radio station, a break with a first book of 1916 marked by late modernism. A Swiss dictionary makes it a key work of postmodernism. It is ranked among her most classical books in form; the antisonnets appear only in her last collection. No French translation of Ocre alone is recorded by the BnF, which lists other collections since 2019.
Who it is for
A collection of sonnets in Spanish, to be read one piece at a time, for a woman's voice that chooses irony.
Prizes and reception
The collection of the break between amorous lament and irony, according to present-day critics.