Alejandra Pizarnik fashioned a complex textual self through a variety of genres and voices. The sense of the radical separateness between these voices has been a function of canonical and historical (and gendered) habits of reading – reified not least by the poet herself – which ultimately served as both duenna and closet, buttressing the notion of a schism between the public and private realms and maintaining the misconception of two radically discrete voices: the sombre, hieratic, disciplined, asexual lyric voice (for years the overdeterminedly ‘Pizarnikian’ voice par excellence) versus the transgressive, humoristic, mainly hypersexualized prose voice. Only quite recently, years after Pizarnik's death, are scholars and other readers able to receive – and restore – a more accurate sense of the nuance and complexity which had been there in Pizarnik's poetry all along, thanks to the publication of previously suppressed texts – what I call unauthorized works, both poems (2000) and prose (2002) – as well as some of her private writing, such as letters (1998) and diaries (2003).

In her book El testigo lúcido, María Negroni describes a process of fixation, disavowal and return, with regard to Alejandra Pizarnik, very similar to my own. Ultimately, Negroni arrived at a characterization which constitutes a holistic approach, respecting the sense of disquiet, deferral and desire in Pizarnik's writing:

Like Negroni, initially I was drawn to Pizarnik's poetry. Later, I read La condesa sangrienta for and ‘as’ a lesbian. Most recently, I undertook a re-evaluation of her poetry, looking for autobiographical signs of lesbian sexuality in poems Pizarnik had published during her life, as well as in several texts published posthumously.