Ida Gramcko was a prominent figure in the political and cultural landscape of twentieth-century Venezuela. She is best known for her poems and plays, but she also published widely as a cultural and literary critic. In addition to her literary endeavors, Gramcko was active in journalism and civil service. She received many literary awards, including the Inter-American Cultural Association Prize, 1941; the Caracas Ateneo Theatre Prize, 1956; the José Rafael Pocaterra Prose Prize, 1957; the Central University of Venezuela Theatre Prize, 1958; the Municipal Poetry Prize, 1963 and 1972; and the Venezuelan National Prize for Literature, 1977.

Gramcko's poetry is highly complex, with a dramatic juxtaposition of elements of tradition, history, and myth together with verbal excess and personal search for transcendence. And yet, despite Gramcko's important and influential presence in Venezuelan letters, few critical studies have analyzed her work in all its complexity and originality.

Because of its violent distortions of reality and...