SOURCE: “Recurring Themes in Alfonsina Storni's Poetry,” in Hispania, Vol. 33, No. 2, 1950, pp. 151–53.

In the following essay, Benton discusses Storni's collection Antología poética in terms of thematic concerns throughout her poetry.

In “Palabras prologales” to her Antología poética Alfonsina Storni states as her own preference for her poetry Ocre, a book of verse published at a time when the poet herself calls her previous poetry of the years 1916–1920 overloaded with romantic sweetness. The poems of Ocre and of the later collections she has chosen for the anthology as characteristic and best appear to be partly a record of the subjective experience of the young artist, partly an interpretation of the twentieth-century world, detached from the merely personal elements. If at first sight the frequent use of the first person throughout her work makes her poetry appear to be primarily confessions in the romantic style, the...