SOURCE: “Poetry,” in Gabriela Mistral: The Poet and Her Work, translated by Helene Masslo Anderson, New York University Press, 1964, pp. 21–93.

In the following excerpt, Arce de Vasquez offers a broad survey of Mistral's poetry ranging from the beginning to the end of her career, and an in-depth explication of selected works.

Gabriela Mistral's poetry stands as a reaction to the Modernism of the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darió (rubendarismo): a poetry without ornate form, without linguistic virtuosity, without evocations of gallant or aristocratic eras; it is the poetry of a rustic soul, as primitive and strong as the earth, of pure accents without the elegantly correct echoes of France. By comparison with Hispanic-American literature generally, which on so many occasions has been an imitator of European models, Gabriela's poetry possesses the merit of consummate originality, of a voice of its own, authentic and consciously realized. The affirmation within...