Portuguese Poems

The first book in a series of collaborations between Tin House and Octopus Books, Brandon Shimoda's Portuguese introduces a powerful new voice in American poetry. The poems in Portuguese began while Brandon rode city buses around Seattle, and were inspired by his fellow passengers—their voices and their minds, their faces and their bodies, their exuberances and infirmities, and the ways in which they enlivened and darkened the days at once. It was with and within these people that poetry seemed most alive. At the same time, they began as responses to the words and writings of visual artists, mostly painters, whom Brandon was reading while riding the bus, especially Etel Adnan, Eugene Delacroix, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, and Joan Mitchell, all of whom appear in the book. It was with and within these people, also, that poetry seemed most alive. In both senses, Portuguese is a work of color. Portuguese owes also a debt to a visit to Beirut, Lebanon (2009); six months spent in a cabin in the woods of western Maine (2010-2011); and the Japanese poets Kazuko Shiraishi, Ryuichi Tamura and Minoru Yoshioka, and their translators. It was written primarily in Seattle, Washington; Beirut, Lebanon; and Weld, Maine, though revised in Albany, California; Beacon, New York; and St. Louis, Missouri. In that sense, Portuguese is a travelogue, as well as a work of restlessness. Throughout writing the poems that became Portuguese, the presiding struggle was with poetry itself—the form and its impulses—voice and mind, face and body, exuberance and infirmity—as well as with the act of writing. The book actually began in the early 1980s, while on the bus to elementary school in a small town in New England, when Brandon was taunted for being “Portuguese.” In that sense, Portuguese returns its author to this moment in which he felt challenged to become what he was being called, however falsely, and despite feeling confused, flushed and afraid. In that sense, Portuguese is a work of crossdressing. However, Portuguese is both more and less than all these things. It was—and is—a way to keep up with life in the form of drawing observations and feelings on paper, and to give form to the energy making up some part of memory. It is the fourth book in a series that began with The Alps, The Girl Without Arms, and O Bon. In this sense—and in all those above—it is an act of preservation, and therefore a work for his friends, his family, and for love.

The present volume assembles, for the first time in English, a wide range of poetic voices and critical perspectives that illustrate the vibrancy and richness of contemporary Portuguese poetry. Special attention is given, in seven chapters, to the relations between poetry and the visual arts, to questions of gender, politics, language, and resistance. While aiming to make a unique contribution to Portuguese Studies, this book also invites scholars engaged in questions of Poetics across the board, to enter into a fresh dialogue.

Fernando Pessoa is Portugal's most important contemporary poet. He wrote under several identities, which he called heteronyms: Albet Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Bernardo Soares. He wrote fine poetry under his own name as well, and each of his "voices" is completely different in subject, temperament, and style. This volume brings back into print the comprehensive collection of his work published by Ecco Press in 1986.

Winner of the Premio Reina Sofia for Poetry Poems of effervescent grace from one of the best-known and best-loved poets of Portugal With the elliptical looping of a butterfly alighting on one’s sleeve, the poems of Ana Lui´sa Amaral arrive as small hypnotic miracles. Spare and beautiful in a way reminiscent both of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson (it comes as no surprise that Amaral is the leading Portuguese translator of Dickinson), these poems—in Margaret Jull Costa’s gorgeous English versions—seamlessly interweave the everyday with the dreamlike and ask “What’s in a name?”

Subtly capturing the innocence and imagination of childhood, this magical poetry collection captures the innocence and imagination of childhood focuses on the importance of family. Deftly translated verse captures the lyrical rhymes of the original Portuguese while providing a whimsical escape for the entire family to enjoy. A free, downloadable booklet with suggestions for further activities is available at www.wingedchariot.com.

First published in 1999, this volume is a collection of papers on Portuguese literature, giving a historical and more updated review. Included are twelve essays presented in chronological order, providing students with a series of assessments and developments.

The poetry of the Provencal troubadours has been widely appreciated this century, but most modern readers of English are unaware of the trovador tradition on the Iberian Peninsula. Some 1,685 cantigas (sung poems), written in Galician-Portuguese between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, survive in several cancioneiros (song books). The language of the cantigas reflects the vernacular spoken along the Minho river dividing Portugal from Galicia. It was the idiom of lyric poets in every Peninsular region except Catalonia. One of the two main types of love songs is the fascinating cantiga d'amigo, derived from an oral tradition native to the peninsula and narrated from the woman's point of view. Satirical songs, on the other hand, provide insights into the history and politics of the day, or else take delight in pure invective and ribald fun far more daring (some would say 'vulgar') than the work of poets of our own day.