Susana Thénon, Ova Completa, Ugly Duckling
Presse, 2021.
excerpt (pdf)
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.”
I’m in disbelief that these poems were written over thirty years
ago by someone born in 1935. How can it be? Susana Thénon’s flair
for code-switching—from Argentine regionalisms to mock etymologies
to an ever-seductive English—seems ahead of its time, as do her
poems’ fragmentariness, skepticism of language and its
institutions. (Vide letters, bureaucracy.) Clearly, they weren’t,
but that’s the magic of their immediacy and of Rebekah Smith’s
brilliant translations. Caustic, restless, and delighting in their
own performativity, they’ll make you want to catch up with them. -
Mónica de la Torre
One of the best kept
secrets of Argentine literature, Susana Thénon’s poetry takes on
new life in this subtle English version of her Ova Completa. Wisely
mixing critical reflection and casual impudence, literary references
and unruly banter, Thénon draws her readers into a powerfully
disquieting reading, a dialogue not only with her many voices but
with literature itself. - Sylvia Molloy
This is the first
time I’ve endorsed a book after reading a handful of poems because
I’ve never encountered a handful of poems this intriguing. Is
Susana Thénon Jorge Louis Borges' long lost daughter, is she Juan
Gelman’s sister, or is she a star from some wholly underrecognized
dimension? It took just a sampling of Ova Completa to expand both my
sense of the Argentinian literary landscape and my sense of poetic
innovation. I can’t wait to read the rest of this rich and
resonating collection. -Terrance Hayes
Experiments with
language, with writing, with discursive genres, with situations and
communicative actions or with pragmatic effects; [Thénon's later
poems] are, in a parodic version, a reflection on all of these. They
are also… a bleak and acidic gaze on a world that “enduring—until
when?—it destroys itself” and that incessantly longs to see
reconstruction rising up over destruction. - Ana María Barrenechea
The thematization is
almost obsessive around the book as aesthetic object and as commodity
that offers a double market to circulation: that of the buying and
selling, and that of the critical and academic discourse. In the face
of both, this text shows itself as a relentless mocker. And so an
anti-aesthetic proposal arises… the effect is to topple hierarchies
and distances, contaminate territories, violently erase the limits of
a discourse typified as “cultured poetry.” … A heterogeneous
and mutant text that on a few pages reasons with cartoonish humor, on
others becomes linguistic decomposition à la Girondo, and on others
almost a Cortázaran fantastic tale or almost a Borgesian essay,
almost a popular song. The reader can perhaps find in these almosts a
little appeasement: a powerful discursive will seeps through...
Delfina Muschietti
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
‘Susana Thénon
(Buenos Aires, 1935-1991) was an Argentine avant-garde poet,
translator, and artistic photographer. The daughter of the
psychiatrist Jorge Thénon, she was a member of Argentina’s
Generación del ’60. Although she was a contemporary of Juana
Bignozzi and Alejandra Pizarnik, Thenon was not part of any literary
group. She affiliated within the marginal construction that works in
her poetry, without adhering to any reigning movement.
‘Her relationship
with other poets of her generation was minimal, with the exceptions
of Maria Negroni, who later became one of the compilers in Thenon’s
posthumous books (La Morada Impossible I and II) and the
aforementioned Pizarnik with which she frequented, and along with
that published in the literary journal Agua Viva (1960), which was
perhaps one of the few signs of her openness to the poetic
environment. A gap in her publications occurred between 1970 and 1982
when she was actively engaged in photography, although she continued
to write during that period. Thenon also wrote some essays.’ —
collaged
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).
On December 17,
2020, UDP hosted the launch event for Ova Completa by Argentine poet
Susana Thénon (1935–1991). Poets Asiya Wadud and Silvina López
Medin read from their work, followed by a reading from Rebekah Smith,
UDP editor and Ova Completa’s translator. Additional contributions
were made by Victoria Cóccaro and Emma Wippermann during the
reading.
Along with fellow
UDP apprentices Ainee Jeong and Raphael Schnee, I prepared an
introduction for one of the readers. Ainee introduced Susana Thenon &
Rebekah Smith, Raphael introduced Silvinia López Medin, and I
introduced Asiya Wadud. I was first introduced to Wadud through her
book Syncope (UDP, 2019) and have since enjoyed exploring more of her
work. Finding her work through UDP has provided comfort and solace
even during a time that has been extremely difficult for many of us.
For me, it felt special for Asiya Wadud and Silvina López Medin to
join Rebekah Smith during this particular reading of Ova Completa.
I, along with the
other members of the audience, were able to bear witness to an
astounding night of community during the Ova Completa launch. Though
sharing space has been rather difficult during the course of the
pandemic, gathering virtually for this reading brought people
together from various corners of the world, including Argentina,
where Susana Thénon is from.
As Rebekah, Silvina,
and Asiya read in a call-and-response fashion from Ova Completa, I
found myself relating to Thénon’s self-reflecting commentary of
decades past. Similarly to Mónica de la Torre, “I’m in disbelief
that these poems were written over thirty year ago by someone born in
1935.” Hearing each of their voices cradling Thénon’s musings as
chorus, it felt more as though Ova Completa was always meant to be
experienced with a community of others. Being introduced to this
sample of meditations by Susana Thénon makes me grateful for the
world of translation and the relationship UDP continues to create
with the writers of our past, often lost to time and not given their
appropriate consideration.
— Bria Strothers
