See the Granger's Guided Tour here.

Our 2026 high school poetry contest winners have been selected. See winning poems here.

See our Compare Poems tool with examples of reading poems side-by-side.

Quick Search:

Rosario Castellanos

Rosario Castellanos was born in Mexico City, Mexico, on May 25, 1925 to Adriana Figueroa and César Castellanos. A year after she was born, her family returned to their native village in the Mexican state of Chiapas, near

Meditation at the Threshold

by Rosario Castellanos (1925–74)

1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2<author>
3  <person id="2063" sex="2" role="author">
4    <name>
5      <firstname>Rosario</firstname>
6      <lastname>Castellanos</lastname>
7    </name>
8    <life-events>
9      <date ty="birth" circa="false" suffix="ad">1925</date>
10      <date ty="death" circa="false" suffix="ad">1974</date>
11      <text-value>(1925–74)</text-value>
12    </life-events>
13    <biography>y</biography>
14  </person>
15</author>
16

No, the solution is not

to jump beneath a train, like Tolstoy's Anna,

nor to swallow Madame Bovary's arsenic,

nor to wait on the barren plains of Ávila‎

for the visit of the angel with the javelin

before tying the scarf around one's head

and beginning to act.

Nor to deduce the laws of geometry by counting

the rafters of the castigation cell,

Click here for complete poem