The Galloping Hour: French Poems

The Galloping Hour: French Poemsnever before rendered in English and unpublished during her lifetimegathers for the first time all the poems that Alejandra Pizarnik (revered by Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolano) wrote in French. Conceived during her Paris sojourn (19601964) and in Buenos Aires (19701971) near the end of her tragically short life, these poems explore many of Pizarniks deepest obsessions: the limitation of language, silence, the body, night, sex, and the nature of intimacy.

Drawing from personal life experiences and echoing readings of some of her beloved/accursed French authorsCharles Baudelaire, Germain Nouveau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaudthis collection includes prose poems that Pizarnik would later translate into Spanish. Pizarniks work led Raúl Zurita to note: Her poetrywith a clarity that becomes piercingilluminates the abysses of emotional sensitivity, desire, and absence. It presses against our lives and touches the most exposed, fragile, and numb parts of humanity.