Ova Completa
Ova Completa
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About the Book
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, song lyrics 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. Ova Completa is a collection full of stylistic innovation, language play, dark humor, and socio-political insight, or, as Thénon writes, “me on earth; me with the others; me ignorant, rude, all mixed in Latin, Greek, shit, noodles, culture, and barbarism.”
Author
Susana Thénon
Susana Thénon (1935–1991) was a poet, translator, and photographer. She is considered part of the Argentine generation of the 60s, alongside contemporaries Alejandra Pizarnik and Juana Bignozzi, though she was never formally aligned with any particular group. She published five books of poetry: Edad sin tregua (1958), Habitante de la nada (1959), De lugares extraños (1967), distancias (1984), and Ova completa (1987). Between her publications of 1967 and 1984, she took a break from poetry, focusing instead on photography, especially photography of the dancer Iris Scaccheri. One of these photos appears on the cover of her book, distancias, and a book Acerca de Iris Scaccheri was published in Buenos Aires by Ediciones Anzilotti in 1988. Distancias was translated into English by Renata Treitel and published by Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, CA) in 1994. Thénon’s work was collected and published in two volumes entitled La morada imposible, edited by Ana M. Barrenechea and María Negroni (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 2001). Some of her poems have also appeared in English in the collections, The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), The Helicon Nine Reader (Kansas City: Helicon Nine Editions, 1990), and Crossings (San Francisco: Center for Art in Translation, 2000).
Translator
Rebekah Smith
is a writer, translator, and editor with a PhD in Comparative Literature. She edits books at Ugly Duckling Presse, and makes small edition artist books and chapbooks with her side project, Johan Johan Editions. Her publications include One Woman Cult (*belladonna collaborative, 2024), The Sea by Victoria Cóccaro (translated from Spanish, DoubleCross, 2024), and Ova Completa by Susana Thénon (translated from Spanish, UDP, 2021). She was a 2024 NEA Literature in Translation Fellow.
Contributor
María Negroni
María Negroni has published several books of poetry and essays, and two novels. Islandia (Station Hill Press), Night Journey (Princeton University Press), Andanza (The Tango Lyrics) (Quattro Books), Mouth of Hell (Action Books), and The Annunciation (Action Books) have appeared in English translation. Her work has also been translated into Swedish, Portuguese, Italian and French. Negroni received a Guggenheim fellowship for poetry in 1994, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1998, the Fundación Octavio Paz fellowship for poetry in 2001, and The New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 2005. She also received a National Book Award for her collection of poems El viaje de la noche, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for Islandia, and the Siglo XXI International Prize for Non-Fiction for Galería Fantástica. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1999 to 2014, and is now directing the first Creative Writing Program to exist in Argentina at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.
Praise
In the News
Excerpt
Kikirikyrie
god help us or god don’t help us
or god half help us
or he makes us believe that he’ll help us
and later sends word that he’s busy
or he helps us obliquely
with a pious “help yourself”
or cradles us in his arms singing softly that we’ll pay for it
if we don’t go to sleep immediately
or whispers to us that here we are today and oh tomorrow too
or tells us the story of the cheek
and the one about the neighbor and the one about the leper
and the one about the little lunatic and the one about the mute who talked
or he puts in his headphones
or shakes us violently roaring that we’ll pay for it
if we don’t wake up immediately
or gives us the tree test
or takes us to the zoo to see
how we look at ourselves
or points out an old train on a ghost of a bridge
propped up by posters for disposable diapers
god help us or not or halfway
or haltingly
god us
god what
or more or less
or neither