SOURCE: Alfonsina Storni: From Poetess to Poet, London: Tamesis Books, Ltd., 1975, pp. 29–44, and 101–20.

In the following excerpt, Phillips analyses formal elements of Storni's poetry on themes of love and death.

Poems of Love

Though El dulce daño, Irremediablemente and Languidez contain among them almost half of Storni's published poetry, there is a certain justification for treating them in this study as sub-divisions of one chapter. They appeared in the space of a very few years: in 1918, El dulce daño; a year later, Irremediablemente; and in 1920, Languidez, along with the second edition of El dulce daño, after which five years passed before Storni's next volume was published. These three collections use a variety of verse-forms, usually stanzaic, and veering away from free verse; rhyme, either consonantal or assonantal, is an important element in the technical organization of their poems. They contain the poetry which assured Storni's...