8 - Desire Deferred: Ana Rossetti's Punto umbrío

Summary

Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato

—Francesco Petrarca (39)

It is not hard to grasp the reasons for the keen interest sparked by the poetry of Ana Rossetti since the publication of Los devaneos de Erato in 1980. The attraction of her work has been both strong and immediate. While feminist critics have been especially interested in her play with gender categories, many readers have been drawn in by the powerful and explicit eroticism of her work. One significant source of appeal is Rossetti's appropriation of images from advertising and popular culture, as seen in her two best-known poems, “Chico Wrangler” and “Calvin Klein, underdrawers.” Not least of all are the seductions of her lush, sensuous language.

While the appeal of Rossetti's work requires no explanation, this apparent immediacy has led to some notoriously superficial appreciations. She is too often presented to the reading public in rather unsubtle ways, as evidenced by statements by two anthologists. For Mari Pepa Palomero, the poet's language is transparent and mimetic: “De tal manera que su mundo poético es abierto, libre, en ningún momento hay oscuridad, o contención, o hermetismo. Cada imagen creada tiene un referente erótico de inmediata interpretación” (Thus her poetic world is open, free; at no time is there obscurity, concealment, hermeticism. Each image created has an erotic referent that can be interpreted immediately) (411).