SOURCE: Modern Women Poets of Spanish America, New York: Hispanic Institute, 1945, pp. 205–27.

In the following excerpt, Rosenbaum discusses themes concerning the individual woman in the modern city in Storni's poetry. Rosenbaum concludes that Storni's poetic voice “is not feminist but feminine in the extreme.”

Ni cupo en otro cuerpo así pequeño Un alma humana de mayor terneza … 

With the publication, in 1916, of her book La inquietud del rosal, Alfonsina Storni was to initiate in her country the fruitful period of modern feminine poetry. …

Storni's lyre, far from being monochord—as are those of so many other poetesses of lesser, or even equal, worth—has multiple and varied tones and themes. For not only does she sing of love without “the instinctive false blushes” which have curbed so many women through the ages; not only are her verses the cry of a sensitive, intelligent woman tortured by a...