Madwomen
The "Locas mujeres" Poems of Gabriela Mistral, a Bilingual Edition
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

Introduction
From Lagar Winepress
La otra
The Other
La abandonada
The Abandoned Woman
La ansiosa
The Anxious Woman
La bailarina
The Ballerina
La desasida
The Woman Unburdened
La desvelada
The Sleepless Woman
La dichosa
The Happy Woman
La ferverosa
The Fervent Woman
La fugitiva
The Fugitive Woman
La granjera
The Farm Woman
La humillada
The Humbled Woman
La que camina
She Who Walks
Marta y María
Martha and Mary
Una mujer
A Woman
Mujer de prisionero
Prisoner’s Woman
Una piadosa
A Pious Woman
From Lagar II
Antígona
Antigone
La cabelluda
The Shaggy Woman
La contadora
The Storyteller
Electra en la niebla
Electra in the Mist
Madre bisoja
Cross-Eyed Mother
La que aguarda
She Who Waits
Dos trascordados
Two Forgotten Ones
La trocada
The Changed Woman
Uncollected
Clitemnestra
Clytemnestra
Casandra
Cassandra
Texts and Sources
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of First Lines
“Couch offers a succinct, comprehensive biocritical introduction to Mistral and her ‘Locas mujeres’ poems, particularly exploring autobiographical issues in the poems. . . . Plentiful information on the rich cross-references . . . in Mistral’s poems and on the identities of those to whom Mistral dedicated her poems enhances this volume, which will interest Spanish and English speakers alike.”
“A beautiful, hard-bound edition. . . . This volume makes it easy for the bilingual reader to jump back and forth between the original poem and the translation to elucidate the meaning of a particularly sophisticated word or to tease out the meaning of an unfamiliar phrasing in the Spanish.”
“Randall Couch has gathered a remarkable collection of Mujeres Locas, the Mad Women pivoting brilliantly within twenty six poems by Gabriela Mistral, taken from previously published and unpublished sources. He has accepted the challenge of setting them forth in English, and one can only respect and applaud his efforts, undertaken with painstaking scholarship and impassioned linguistic acuity.”
“This collection deploys the best of the best, revealing for the first time these poems of anguish and triumph from the winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature. Randall Couch matches her brilliance, depth and range. Here is her direct witness to war and Holocaust, dispatched from Southern France and Brazil, her revisions of Greek tragedy, written in occupied Europe, and her serene and uncompromising, Buddhist-Franciscan defense of the land and indigenous cultures. Here, in stunningly contemporary terms, is the protean complexity of one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.”
The Poetry Society, London: Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation
Won
PEN American Center: PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
Short Listed
Literature and Literary Criticism: Romance Languages
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