Poetry
Casa o lobo
Not translated into English
Yolanda Pantin · 1981
Synopsis
The author's first collection, turned inward, which rebuilds through the images of memory the places, the time and the meanings of childhood. A country childhood meets the nation's colonial past, and the house, which gives the book half its title, becomes a disquieting figure. The poet still places herself here within a tradition that her companions of the Tráfico group would soon challenge.
Context
The collection was published in 1981 in Caracas by Monte Ávila, in the Los Espacios Cálidos series, the very year the Tráfico group was born. It opens a body of work continued with Correo del corazón, La quietud and País, gathered in a Poesía reunida in 2004; in the review Letras, Dámaris Vásquez Suárez studies it as the first milestone of a "woman's word". The book has been translated into neither French nor English.
Who it is for
To discover the beginnings of a major Venezuelan poet, in a language that searches the memory of childhood.
Prizes and reception
In 1979, before its publication, the collection received an honourable mention at the Francisco Lazo Martí national poetry prize.