about the author

Enriqueta Ochoa was a Mexican poet, born near the middle of the country in Torreón. At age 19, she published her first collection of poems, The Urgencies of a God. It would be another eighteen years before she would publish her next collections, The Hymns of the Blind and The Terrestrial Virgins, but it wasn't until the 1987 publication of Return of Electra that Ochoa was hailed as a necessary voice in Mexican poetry. Written after an "avalanche of death" that started with the sudden loss of her father and would eventually claim her mother, sister, and brother within months of each other, Return of Electra is a haunting confessional. Ochoa taught at many universities in Mexico, and she has been honored by the National Museum of Mexico, nominated for the National Prize for Arts and Sciences, received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts, and has her work taught throughout her home country. My translated poems come from Ochoa's 2008 Collected Poetry.