Abstract: (Contrasts in Ida Vitale’s Poetry) Ida Vitale is a poet and translator who, along with Mario Benedetti and Juan Carlos Onetti, is a member of Generation of ’45 literary movement in Uruguay. She has been awarded numerous prizes, among them the Reina Sofía Prize and the Cervantes Prize, due to the impact of her carefully crafted poetry and her essentialist style. She avoids ostentation and skillfully articulates her poems by combining a fractured, disconcerting syntax with a series of contrasts which outline areas characterised by a fragile balance between clarity and mystery. We aim at analysing the explicit and implicit contrasts in her poetry, as well as the tension arising from the opposition between ellipsis and some iterative rhetorical figures such as alliteration. The Uruguayan’s poet writing strives to identify the precise, crucial word, after exploring lexical antonyms which suggest new perspectives on the well-known contrasts between water and fire, light and darkness, or movement and stillness.