More than fifty years after the publication of her first collection of poetry and thirty-five years after her death, we are in a position to map out the route taken by criticism of Alejandra Pizarnik's work. At first, critical interest was centred on her poetry (including the prose poems and narratives), and this continues to be the focus of many critical studies. Later, scholars and essayists turned their attention to her ‘heterodox’ prose texts, particularly La condesa sangrienta and La bucanera de Pernambuco. In recent years, in response to the publication of the Correspondencia, Prosa and Diarios, critical emphasis has gradually shifted to a study of other texts by Pizarnik, and to the analysis of her readings of literary works, whether classic, contemporary, canonical or marginal. Many ‘informal’ instances of these readings are to be found in her books, notebooks and scrapbooks. Such studies allow for a greater understanding of Pizarnik's literary interests, of what she absorbed and whom she was influenced by, as well as what she rejected, and the overall development of her own creativity: