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

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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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