Ida Vitale. Procura de lo imposible. Mexico City. Fondo de Cultura Economica. 1998. 139 pages. ISBN 968-16-5475-7.

Lindstrom, Naomi

After starting out as part of the 1940s generation of Uruguayan lyric poets that included Idea Vilarino and Mario Benedetti, Ida Vitale (b. 1924) has in recent years had an international career, moving between Montevideo, Mexico City, and U.S. university towns, with briefer stays at other destinations. A literary journalist and reviewer as well as a poet with a lengthy career, Vitale in her creative writing draws upon her thorough knowledge of the Spanish American literary scene.

Procura de lo imposible, Vitale's 1998 collection of poetry and short texts in poetic prose, is dense with literary allusions. It makes its place in an extensive web of poets, texts, and current tendencies and issues in poetry. Especially notable are her ties to contemporary Mexican verse, with a particularly strong link to Octavio Paz. While the majority of the connections are to contemporary Spanish American poetry, Vitale also reaches out to European and U.S. poets. In the last section, "La voz cantante," Vitale extends the chronological range, often through references to the writing and song of the medieval, Renaissance, and early modern eras. This section roams through cultural history, bringing in figures of classical antiquity, the great composers, and others. Since perhaps no reader is sufficiently well read to appreciate the texts without some outside research, it was a wise editorial decision to offer readers guidance in the form of a few judiciously placed footnotes. The notes are particularly appreciated in the case of those poems that take phrases from other poets as their opening lines and from there proceed to develop the borrowed concept or image.

Even at first reading, Vitale's texts quickly reveal her secure and expert grasp of a literary language marked by tight compression. Most of the poems occupy less than a page, whereas the lengthier ones only run to a second page, yet these brief texts cover a range of complex themes. In a number of her compositions, the speaker is overheard pondering issues that, at the end of the text, are still eluding resolution; several poems feature questions as their closing lines. The lexicon occasionally tends to the erudite ("Clinamen," used as the title of a poem) and includes specific names of plants and proper nouns.

As the above might suggest, the ultimately rewarding Procura de lo imposible is at times a workout for the reader, especially in the texts that rely most heavily on allusions. Still, Vitale's writing could not accurately be called hermetic or obscure. Rather, this high-culture poet presupposes a reader with a good general culture or at least a willingness to look up references. Throughout, Procura de lo imposible is unmistakably the work of a poet who has developed a sure expertise in her outlook and voice.

Naomi Lindstrom

University of Texas, Austin