ABSTRACT
The Spanish poet Francisca Aguirre (b. 1930) revives legendary Penelope in Ithaca (1972), which has now been accurately and fluidly translated by Ana Valverde Osan. Focusing on Penelope instead of the Homeric Ulysses “of many wiles,” the book is a thematically unified sequence of both long and short poems portraying the woman, letting her speak, as well as using her both as a persona and an alter ego so that Aguirre can speak in her own right. Some poems are almost diary-like, while others open out onto more timeless, mythical evocations of the sea and the island of Ithaca. Ithaca is often used metaphorically, as in the line “Ithaca is within, or one may not reach it.”
