Mapping Brazil - Literature: Poetry

Poetry: multiple routes
The notable quality and volume of poetry produced in Brazil bear witness to the vitality of this area of literature. Fortunately, this is a constant rather than a new trend.

If people still say that books of poetry sell poorly, this is purely from a market perspective; it has nothing to do with the quality if what is written, and in no way inhibits the emergence of new poets or the continued output of those who publish poetry regularly. Blogs, websites, readings and large and small publishers are all responsible for keeping this genre vibrant. Indeed, while printed magazines may have been important vehicles in the early 1990s, they are now few in number and those magazines that do exist are almost all published online.

As in fiction, the diversity of poetry makes it impossible to trace out a homogeneous picture. Different lineages coexist in which lessons learnt from the poets from high modernism – especially Manuel Bandeira (1886-1968), Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987) and João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999) – can still be detected, but there is also a will to move on, or rather, to move on from their lessons.

One overriding feature of the many coexisting lineages is a contemporaneity of “forms”. Free verse coexists with metre, the sonnet with concrete formats, the colloquial with the highbrow, and so on. These multiple forms are demonstrative of how little today’s poets choose to follow a sure, canonical lineage that might assure them risk-free, pre-approved entry to the ranks of Brazilian poetry.

Paulo Henriques Britto (1951) is a poet who takes the sonnet and other set forms, only to hang on them the prosaic, the narrative, humour, and in so doing to review the relationship between form and content, as is the case in his Formas do nada (“Forms From Nothing”, 2012). Along similar lines, Antonio Cicero (1945) digs back into the Greek and Latin classics to put subject matter dear to the Western lyrical tradition on the mundane city ground, as in Por ventura (“By Chance”, 2012).

Taking quite a different direction where rhythmic precision, economy and ellipsis are prized are poets like Tarso de Melo, author of Caderno inquieto (“Uneasy Notebook”, 2012), Sérgio Alcides, with Píer (“Pier”, 2012) and Alberto Martins, with Em trânsito (“In Transit”, 2010). Meanwhile, Régis Bonvicino, who in the 1990s dabbled in this realm, has since taken different, broader, more prosaic paths, reaching new formal solutions in Estado crítico (“Critical State”, 2013).

If the 1990s were marked by a return to standard forms, subject matter and vocabulary in peaceful cohabitation with the constructive procedures of poets like João Cabral de Melo Neto, what we see now is a return of some of the gesturality of the 1970s marginal poets. There is a perceptible will to de-intellectualise poetry, an interest in the commonplace, wit and a formal relaxation bordering on the colloquial, as can be seen in the work of Fabricio Corsaletti, in Esquimó (“Eskimo”, 2010), Angélica Freitas, in Um útero é do tamanho de um punho (“A Womb is the Same Size as a Fist”, 2012), and Bruna Beber, in Rua da padaria (“Street with the Bakery”, 2013), to mention just three.

The marginal poets themselves – as the authors who began their careers in the 1970s have come to be called – are still writing. After 25 years without publishing, Charles Peixoto (1948) has brought out Sessentopeia (“Sixtipede”, 2011) and a collection of his books, Supertrampo (“Superjob”, 2014). So apparently unavoidable – verging on the canonical – has the apparently unpretentious poetry by that group of young writers based in Rio de Janeiro become that one of its best known authors, Chacal (1951), has used it to produce a mix of autobiography and chronicle of a generation in his Uma história à margem (“A History in the Margins”, 2010). Older but still with poetry of the same generation as Peixoto and Chacal, Francisco Alvim (1938) is an example of a writer who has made orality his hallmark, as can be seen in O metro nenhum (“No metre”, 2011).

For geographical reasons, Nicolas Behr (1958) was an exception in marginal poetry. Although he was attuned to its aesthetics and production methods – especially the handmade books produced in small quantities – he lived in the capital city, Brasília, a far cry from the beaches in the south zone of Rio. It is no surprise, then, that he made Brasilia his main theme, as in Meio feio (“Uglyish”, 2012), Brasífra-me (“Brasypher me”, 2013) and A teus pilotis (“To Your Pillars”, 2014).

As if they were reviewing the modernist tradition and retrieving the marginal poets’ attachment to the quotidian, yet drawing away from the short, pithy snapshots presented in the “pill poems” (poemas-pílula), more recent poets like Ismar Tirelli Neto, in Ramerrão (2011), Alberto Pucheu, in Mais cotidiano que o cotidiano (“More Daily Than Daily Life”, 2013) and Annita Costa Malufe, in Quando não estou por perto (“When I’m Not Around”, 2012), all investigate the potential of the long narrative verse bordering on prose. In any kind of generalisation, it is always necessary to note differences, and one case in point is the poetry of Leonardo Gandolfi (1981), whose A morte de Tony Bennett (“The Death of Tony Bennett”, 2010) draws on elements of pop culture and kitsch, or that of Marília Garcia (1979), in Um teste de resistores (“A Test of Resistors”, 2104), which makes constant reference to high culture in an intense interplay of references and intertexuality.

A narrative bias appears in a different guise in the poetry of Horácio Costa (1954), in books like Bernini (2013) and Onze duodécimos (“Eleven Twelfths”, 2014). Here, the verse is the most complete unit, and the rhythm seems to obey an implicit metre. A recurring theme of his poems, homoeroticism, is also found in Ricardo Domenek’s (1977) Ciclo do amante substituível (“Cycle of the Replaceable Lover”, 2012).

Daily life is also portrayed in Dever (“Duty”, 2013) by Armando Freitas Filho, a poet with a long track record. But in it a commonplace event takes on aspects of memory, and his clean verses with their powerful emotive content are fed more by biographical content than anything else.

City living, melancholia and formal precision in addressing contemporary times are also features of poets as diverse as Ricardo Silvestrin (1963), in Metal (2013), Rodrigo Garcia Lopes (1965), in Estúdio realidade (“Reality Studio”, 2013) and Experiências extraordinárias (“Extraordinary Experiences”, 2015), and Paulo Scott (1966), author of Mesmo sem dinheiro comprei um esqueite novo (“Even Out of Cash I Bought a New Skateboard”, 2014).

More lyrical, intimate sensibilities are given voice by Ana Martins Marques in Da arte das armadilhas (“On the Art of Entrapment”, 2011), Laura Liuzzi in Desalinho (“Unaligned”, 2014), and Alice Sant’Anna in Rabo de baleia (“Whale Tail”, 2013).

As for the ongoing trend in experimental poetry, the prime example has to be Arnaldo Antunes (1961) in Agora aqui ninguém precisa de si (“Now Here No-One Needs Themselves”, 2015). His work is marked by a combination of colloquial language, techniques and subject matter that lend his work a contemporary feel while also leaving no doubt as to his debt to the historical vanguards, especially the concrete poets.

The other pillars of Brazilian contemporary poetry are some established names with a long track record. In Miserere (2013), Adélia Prado remains true to her use of religion as a driving force behind her world view. Meanwhile, in Alguma parte alguma (“Some Place”, 2010), Ferreira Gullar probes the mysteries of the universe without ever losing touch with earthly dimensions and the body as the primary source of experience converted into writing.

The passing of Manoel de Barros (1916-2014) in 2014 cannot go unremarked. After compiling his entire body of work in Poesia completa (“Complete Poems”, 2010), he went on to publish Escritos em verbal de ave (“Writings in Bird Verbal”, 2011) and Portas de Pedro Viana (“Doors of Pedro Viana”, 2013), ever faithful to the rare alliance between observation of nature and unbounded imagination.

Finally, we should record the collections of works brought out of three great poets, many of whose books are no longer in print: Paulo Leminski (1944-1989), whose Toda poesia (“All Poetry”, 2013) was for a long time on the bestseller list, making it an exception in the realm of poetry; Ana Cristina César (1952-1983), with Poética (“Poetic”, 2013), confirming her influence on the poetry written today in Brazil; and Waly Salomão (1943-2003), who, thanks to Poesia total (“Total Poetry”, 2014), can be hailed as an essential figure in Brazilian contemporary poetry.

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