The Lady of Elche

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During Amanda Berenguer's lifetime, The Lady of Elche was one of her most acclaimed collections of poetry. The many faces surfacing through its portraits hint at her multifaceted poetics writ large. Dazzling landscapes transport her characteristic curiosity about the world, merging past with present. Berenguer pointedly cycles her mythological navigations of the surface toward revelations of a counterforce: other knowledge percolating below. And so it is not only the ancient Iberian sculpture known as "La dama de Elche" that she unearths. Berenguer descends in search of images silenced by the neofascist Uruguayan dictatorship of 1973-1985, whose exercises in annihilation and complicity still impact public life today. Presented here in its first bilingual edition, the 1987 book drips with prophecy still relevant to our own time.