The Blinding Star: Selected Poems by Blanca Varela. Poetry by Blanca Varela. Translated by Lisa Allen Ortiz and Sara Daniele Rivera. Paperback. 184 pages. September 14th, 2021. ISBN 9781948800440.

The Blinding Star collects selected new translations of poems by the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela and includes two of her most experimental works in their entirety: The Book of Clay and Animal Concert. Although Varela has been categorized as a surrealist, this collection reframes her work as existentially feminist. There is nothing arbitrary in Varela’s serrated language and carnal obsessions. She is telling the story of a woman’s liminal being—her body as both a vessel of expectations and a vast unmapped interior. Octavio Paz described Varela’s work as “Both the wound and the knife,” and this collection emphasizes the duality of her poetry. These poems journey inward through dark gardens to expose the wound of grief and outward again with sharp clarity. Blanca Varela is a singular artist, furiously searching for fragments of brightness in the merciless landscape of her own mind.