Aufgabe 6 Raymond L. Bianchi Introduction

Brazilian Poetry in Translation

Paulo Leminski, one of Brazil’s great avant-garde poets, said “to write in Portuguese is to be mute to the world,” in describing the conundrum of Brazilian poetry. Brazil – a nation that offers so much due to its fusion of cultures and languages – strangely remains ignored globally. My aim in this section is to showcase both established and emerging poets who are diverse in region, class, gender and race to give the reader a sense of the complex, unique realities in Brazil. I have included poems from Brazil’s most influential Concrete poet, Augusto de Campos. Concrete poetry, or visual poetry, is everywhere in Brazil and is regularly seen in advertising and theater productions. I am honored that Seu Augusto is sharing his poems here. The poetry of Régis Bonvicino bridges a divide between the international poetic community and Brazil. In the past  years, no poet has done more to bring Brazil to a global audience. I was also fortunate to collect poetry from many avant-garde poets whose work is not well known in the United States, some being translated here for the first time, such as Maria Ester Maciel. Claudia Roque Pinto’s poetry is filled with verve and is slowly moving onto the world stage. Josely Vianna Baptista’s meditative, reflective poems have been very influential, and her work engages with innovative poetic traditions in France and the United States. Virna Teixiera is at once a poet, neurologist,and painter exemplifying a Brazilian jeito, or “way of being.” Sérgio Medeiros is from Mato Grosso and is partly of Guarani Indigenous origin. His remarkable work Catarata is about the most important feature of the Brazilian landscape – water, and most particularly the Iguaçu Falls. It is important to acknowledge the immense loss of Laís Corrêa de Araújo, one of the most important Brazilian avant-garde poets of the th century, who died at the end of . She and her husband Affonso Ávila were teachers and mentors to a generation of Brazilian poets. Dr. Araújo was from the Minas Gerais region of Brazil, known as a wellspring of cultural production in the nation. Minas is the birthplace of Brazilian Baroque and is known as a center of visual art. Araújo was born in  and lived a full life as a poet. She was close to the great Brazilian poets Haroldo de Campos and João Cabral Melo Neto; she was also in dialogue with and translated André Breton, bringing the avant-garde to Brazil and Brazil to the global avant-garde. Generations of poets and writers were fueled by her work as a teacher at the University in Belo Horizonte, and in  she helped organize the Semana Vanguardia of Poetry in São Paulo. She also fought against the 11

brutal dictatorship that came to power in Brazil in  and lasted until . During this dark time her work was not published and she was imprisoned for her writings. I wish to dedicate this collection to her memory. Lastly, I want to recognize the other translators whose work made this selection possible: Chris Daniels, Idra Novey, Akira Nishimura, Steve Butterman, Odile Cisneros (for the translations and the essay), James Mulholland and Cyana Leahy. I also want to thank Waltraud Haas for her help in this effort – she is the thing I most love about Brazil. –  . B Chicago, 

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