Torquato Neto: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Torquato Neto Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Torquato Pereira de Araújo Neto (November 9, 1944 – November 10, 1972) was a Brazilian journalist, poet and songwriter. He is perhaps best known as a lyricist for the Tropicália counterculture movement, which later expanded its influence to Música popular brasileira. He worked with Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Edu Lobo and Waly Salomão. He committed suicide at the age of 28.

Cogito

I am as I am
a pronoun
untransferable
from the man I began
at the measure of the impossible

I am as I am
now
without great secrets beneath
without new secret teeth
at this hour

I am as I am
present
unleashed, indecent
like a piece of myself

I am as I am
visionary
and I live peacefully
all the hours of the end

Let´s Play That

when I was born
a crazy, very crazy angel
came to read my palm
it wasn´t a baroque angel
it was a crazy, crooked angel
with wings like a plane
and behold, this angel told me,
pressing my hand
with a clenched smile:
go on, pal, sing off key
in the happy people´s choir
go on, pal, sing of key
in the happy people´s choir
let´s play that
Translated by Dana Steven

Carla Diacov: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Carla Diacov brazilian poet

Biography.

Carla Diacov, São Bernardo do Campo, 1975. She is the author of the books: Amanhã Alguém Morre no Samba (Douda Correria, 2015/Edições Macondo, 2018), ninguém vai poder dizer que eu não disse (Douda Correria, 2016), bater bater no yuri (livro online pela Enfermaria 6, 2017), A Munição Compro Depois (Cozinha Experimental, 2018), A Menstruação de Valter Hugo Mãe (Casa Mãe, Portugal, 2017/Edições Macondo, 2020), in which the poems are illustrated by drawings made with menstrual blood.

The Cair

there once was a couple with only one chair
in the chair sat the ovulated wife
and sat the menstruated wife
the man sat in the chair erect there was
this one convention between the couple
that the chair would be a regulating ritual
of the dirtiness type of object of contamination
of the woman things in the man things
afterwards they lay in the very only bed for one
pregnancy never happened and the wife died sitting
in the chair the husband married again but
the new wife brought along another chair and
pregnancy never happened thought
the first husband
we’re not using the same chair
the husband died in the first chair
and the second wife kept the house
with the only bed and she got rid of the first
chair
a fisherman bought the chair for three
scrawny sardines and sat in the chair
facing the world and precisely the world he knew he was
fenced off from the first aura
a chair where the first one
and the contamination
the fisherman was creating another chair
the third
a
daughter of that first convention

Holding Hands

i pass by these two lovers
it’s like holding my hands in a bucket of sardines
so many nips
i am wounded
it’s not mortal
passing by those two lovers
was like holding in a bucket of salt
my shredded hands
so many sardines
how the sun cuts
not even half a cat in sight
how the light cuts
how the boat cuts
so many scales
it’s like holding my hands
so many arms
not even half a cat
not even half a tongue
not even half bad

Lap

lay the mute fork in my lap
say incomprehensible things about love
say domestic things about life and hate
say not knowing how to tell death from technical death
say the anguish over the cat’s communication
lay the naked knife in my lap
say forbidden things about the thought of flower
say things under the nails of the dead
between their hairs
lay the dirty plate in my lap
say things and say and dance the fingers
lay the cracked glass in my lap
say things say things and all I hear is the tear in this our gentle language

Translated by Annie McDermott

Eliane Potiguara: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Eliane Potiguara Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Eliane Potiguara (1950) is an award-winner writer, poet, activist, professor, social entrepreneur of indigenous descent. She published the following books: A Terra é a Mãe do Índio (1989), Akajutibiró: Terra do Índio Potiguara (1994), Metade Cara, Metade Máscara (2004; 2018), O Sol do Pensamento (2005), O Coco que guardava a noite (2012), O Pássaro Encantado (2014), A Cura da Terra (2015). She was bestowed the Order of Cultural Merit from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, and participated in the elaboration of The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Her texts and poems have been published in several magazines, websites, anthologies and e-books.

In this century of pain

In this century we'll no longer have sexes.
For being a mother in this century of death
Is to be feverish to subexist
Is to be a female in pain
Plundered in the condition of woman

I repeat
That in this century we'll no longer have sexes
I don't care if they understand
Or can only grasp it in another stupid century

We no longer have vaginas, we no longer breed
Our husbands have died
And to bear sick indigenous people
For our children to be killed
And thrown in the ditches
On the obscure roads of life
In this world without people
It only takes one mastermind

In this century we'll no longer have breasts
Spites, eyes, mouths or ears
Sexes or ears do not matter
Principles, morals, prejudices or defects
I no longer want the agony of the centuries ...

In this century there'll be no more way for us
Manners, beauty, love or money
In this century, oh God (? !)
There'll be no way for us.

Translated by Rubens Chinali
Published in Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (2020).

Ricardo Aleixo: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Ricardo Aleixo Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Ricardo Aleixo (born in 1960 in Belo Horizonte) is a decidedly interdisciplinary artist. He is a poet, essayist, editor, visual artist, sound designer, singer, composer and performer. He co-founded and curates the FAN (Festival de Arte Negra), the major art and culture festival of the African Diaspora in Brazil.He is the author of six books, including his latest Pesado demais para a ventania: antología poetica (Todavia, 2018). Best known for his poetry’s visual and social characteristics, his work draws connections between concrete poetry and ethno-poetry.

My Man

I am whatever you think a black man is. You almost never think about black men. I will always be what you want a black man to be. I am your black man. I’ll never be only your black man. I am my black man before I am yours. Your black man. A black man is always somebody’s black man. Or they are not a black man at all, but a man. Just a man. When they say that a man is black, what they mean is that he is more black than he is man. But all the same, I’m a black man to you. I’m what you imagine black men to be. I can spill onto your whiteness the blackness that defines a black man in the eyes of someone who is not black. The black man is the invention of the white man. It is believed that to the white man falls the burden of creating all that is good in the world, and that I am good, and that I was created by whites. That they fear me more than they fear other white people. That they fear me, but at the same time desire my forbidden body. That they would scalp me for the doomed love they bear for my blackness. I was not born black. I’m not black every moment of the day. I am black only when they want me to be black. Those times that I am not just black, I am as adrift as the most lost white person. I am not just what you think I am.


Translated by Dan Hanrahan

Shango

The one who
hurls stones
of lightning
against the house
of the meddler.
Leopard,
husband of Ọya.
Leopard,
son of Yemoja.
Shango boils
yams
with the wind
that leaves
his nostrils.
He gives a new name
to the Musulmi.
He is still alive
when they think
he is already dead.
Orisha who kills
the first
and who kills
the twenty-
fifth.
Shango chases down
the Christian
with his cry,
cloud
that overshadows
a corner of the sky.
Leopard
with coruscant gaze,
do not allow
death
to take me
one single day
before my time.

Translated by Rubens Chinali
Published in Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (2020).

Night of Calunga in the Bairro Cabula

I died how many times
in the longest night?

In the motionless night,
heavy and long,

I died how many times
on the night of calunga?

The night does not end
and here I am

dying again
nameless and again

dying with each
hole opened

in the musculature
of the person I once was.

I died how many times
in the bleeding bruised night?

In the night of calunga
so long and so heavy,

I died how many times
on that terrible night?

The night most death
and there I was

dying again
voiceless and again

dying with each
bullet lodged

in the deepest depths
of what I remain

(and with each silence
of stone and mortar

that sheds the white
of your indifference

onto the shadow
of what I no longer am

and never will be again).
I died how many times

in the night of calunga?
In the brackish night,

night without end,
the oceanic night, all

emptied of blood,
I died how many times

in the terrible night
the night of calunga

in the Bairro Cabula?
I’ve died so many times

but they never kill me
once and for all.

My blood is a seed
that the wind roots

in the belly of the earth
and I am born again

and again and my name
is that which does not die

before making the night
no longer the silent

partner of death
but the mother that births

children the color of night
and watches over them

as a panther
who shows, in the light

of her gaze and in
the sharpness of her teeth,

just what she will do
if the hand of evil

even imagines
troubling the sleep

of her cub.
I’ve died so many times

but I am always
reborn stronger

brave and beautiful—
all I know is to be.

I am many, I extend
across the world

and across time inside
me and I am so many

one day I will make
life live.

Translated by Dan Hanrahan

Nicolas Behr: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Nicolas Behr Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Nicolas Behr (Cuiabá - 1958) is a Brazilian poet, generally associated with the Mimeograph Generation and Marginal Poetry. In 1977, he launched Iogurte com farinha (Yogurt with flour) - his first made in mimeograph, with 8,000 copies sold from hand to hand through bars and other public places in the Federal Capital. In August 1978, after writing Grande Circular, Caroço com Goiaba and Chá Com Porrada he was arrested and prosecuted by DOPS for "possession of pornographic material", being tried and acquitted the following year.

Lar do Menor

(The House for the Young)

where today stands edith’s house,
where they sell fabric,
was the lar do menor

lar do menor was demolished
everything was demolished

everything
everything
everything
everything
everything
everything

they even demolished our
football field

Enigmatic Brasilia

brasilia, there are exactly 3232 days left
until we balance the books

you owe me a poem
i owe you a tender look

on the shores of the paranoa lake
i grab a piece of wood
between an old tire and a dead fish
(an egret is my witness)

you don’t recognize me
i don’t recognize you

* * *
how to decipher
your handwriting
of posts and winds?

The Story Of Quinzinho

quinzinho was a crazy guy
that traveled between
montes claros and janauba,
in the north of minas gerais

to enliven his walks
he constructed a truck
made of wood, carrying
different wares
all from his farms, he would say

cattle, rice, charcoal, pequi and,
more recently, soy
all nicely set up
in his toy truck

quinzinho was killed, run over,
close to capitão enéas
while he changed the tire
of his truck
on the side of the road
Translated by Michael J. Hill

Olga Savary: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Olga Savary Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Olga Savary (21 May 1933 – 15 May 2020) was a Brazilian writer, poet, and literary critic. She wrote several publications and was a member of PEN International. Notably, she won the Prêmio Jabuti in 1970 for Espelho Provisório. In Olga Savary, there is a mixture of explosion and sensitivity, of folly and modesty, as if she feared, by speaking out loud, she would break the enchantment of life: whether it be a child, a memory, a city. Olga Savary died on 15 May 2020 in Teresópolis at the age of 86 due to COVID-19.

Eden Hades

Water gardens satisfy our thirst
sunshine swollen in veins
hanging like mango
and I was like the owner of a ship
arrogant, deserving. Just like
an open vowel, I opened doors for the sand
in sudden loss of memory.
That the air should be swallowed like a ship.
All the sea breeze appears on the terraces
and vibrates in the sargassos above the swells.
Caught in the trap
Transforms the darkness to morning.
These are the contours of the dream:
a silver plaque and a name inscribed,
today deleted, engraved long,
long ago. And only that. The gods summon us,
they want us all because they want nothing,
they laugh at us, they lose us to win us
and to our questions
they play deaf,
they don’t respond except for the hollow
echo. Everything loses meaning
evil is pronounced.

Translated by Rosaliene Bacchus

Angélica Freitas: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Angélica Freitas Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Angélica Freitas (born April 8, 1973) is a Brazilian poet and translator. Angélica Freitas had her poems published for the first time in an anthology of Brazilian poetry published in Argentina, titled Cuatro poetas recientes del Brasil (Buenos Aires: Black & Vermelho, 2006), organized and translated by Argentine poet Cristian De Nápoli. Her first book of poems was Rilke Shake (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2007). In 2012 her book um útero é do tamanho de um punho was a finalist on 2013 Prêmio Portugal Telecom.The English edition of Rilke Shake (translated by Hillary Kaplan) won the Best Translated Book Award for poetry in 2016. Freitas's poetry was published in France, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States. Her poems were published at several print and digital magazines

The Woman Is A Construction

the woman is a construction
must be

the woman is basically meant to be
a housing complex
all the same
everything plastered
just change the color

particularly I'm a woman
of bricks on display
in social gatherings having to be
the most hardly dressed

I say I'm a journalist

(the woman is a construction
with too many holes

leaks

the revista nova* is the ministry
of cloacal affairs
pardon me
do not talk about shit in the revista nova*)

you are a woman
and if you suddenly wake up binary and blue
and spend the day turning the light on and off?

(do you like being brazilian?
to be called virginia woolf?)

the woman is a construction
makeup is camouflage
every woman has a gay friend
how good it is to have friends

all friends have a gay friend
who has a woman
who calls him fred astaire

at this point, it's already late
the psychologists of the freud coffee shop
look and smile

nothing is going to change–

nothing will ever change–

the woman is a construction

Translated by Rosaliene Bacchus

Grad

men women are born they grow
they see how others are born
and how they disappear
from this mystery a cemetery arises
they bury bodies then forget

men women are born they grow
they see how others are born
and how they disappear
they record, record with their phones
make spreadsheets then forget

they hope their time comes slowly
men women
don’t know what comes next
so they go to grad school

men women are born they grow
they know that one day they’re born
and the next they disappear
but that’s not why they forget
to turn off the lights and the gas

Translated by Daniel Medin

One More (tiny) Thing

don’t calculate what you’ve lost in buying a box of pins (made in china)
and from where exactly they emerge with heads (flat)
and your cursing mao tse when a drop of blood appears (from the finger)
and when you find a pin in the street, leave it there (it’s not dead)
the same kind of pin pointing to the blouses (in your closet)
and brushing your skin it produces a red (so rare)
and someone is dreaming of pins (in china)
in this life only valued by a dozen (clearly)

Translated by Farnoosh Fathi