frederick, when i wrote about brazilian positive creativity, i had in mind,
in the field of poetry, precisely the two poets you mentioned, joćo cabral
and carlos drummond.
they're sometimes great, and they introduced for the first time in portugese
language - i mean in a high degree - a poetry more visual than discoursive,
something
that i prefer, which i see in latin, chinese, japanese, north-american
poetry and not in fernando pessoa, who is heavily rethoric.
when i say i look for the, let's use the term, avant-garde, i'm not thinking
in finnegan's wake, nor in most of the stuff in poud's cantos, nor in atonal
music, nor in construtivist painting. it's just a more conscious and radical
care about form, without any rule or inhibition, and it's adequacy to the
living time.
i think auden, for instance, a lovely personality and human person, highly
intelligent and sometimes incredible poet (i've recreated a poem of his in
portugese)
is most of the time, to my taste, formally reactionary: in his didaticism
and regular simmetric cadence, for instance. this doesn't prevent me from
enjoying some of his work.
you are probably right about brazilian poets in sun and moon press, as i can
imagine for what i see in anthologies even here.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 6:16 PM
Subject: "incapacity to be interested"
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ana Olinto" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 6:26 AM
> Subject: Re: Last Post Laureate
>
>
> you are right, doug, she has sometimes great sentences.
> my problem is my tendency to judge everything by
> great modernist standards.
>
> i'm not a big fan of paz and borges as artists, but only
> - particularly borges - as essayists (you can hit me).
> i think brazilians are more instintive and creative, tend to be
> the best artists of latin america, and hispano-americans are
> more serious and universal, tend to be the best intellectuals.
>
> when i talk about anglo-saxon understanding of latin culture,
> i have t.s. eliot, pound, marianne moore, elizabeth bishop,
> wallace stevens, mina loy, james joyce and similar others
> - including some recent revolutionary translators - in mind.
> we could also mention kenneth rexroth.
> they're all modern, complex - exept rexroth -, and today we
> are reactionary (formally), simplistic.
>
> people just TALK about cosmopolitism, but lack of intelligence
> means incapacity to UNDERSTAND - and not incapacity
> merely to be interested in - another way of thinking.
>
> -------------- ana
>
>
>
> Dear Ana,
>
> Formal sophistication is not the only measure of poetic greatness. Formal
> developments are only important if they allow readers to grasp new
> realities, or old realities in new ways. They are important, that is, if
> they serve what can in the largest sense be called content. The situation
> is different in visual art. There, Cubism made a guitar and newspaper on
> a table something more than trivial; rather timely, even revelatory. (See
> Berger's "The Moment of Cubism.") But even in visual art it is unwise to
> assume either that formal experimentation is in itself culturally
> progressive, or that it makes up for lack of thought about content, or
> nullifies any distinction between them. And in poetry those assumptions
> are simply specious. Joao Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de
> Andrade (whom I can only read, but whom I enjoy, in translation) *show me
> something about Brazil - i.e., about "Brazil" as various ways of being and
> feeling; as a worldly metaphysics. The Brazilian Language Poets brought
> together in a Sun and Moon Press anthology show me nothing. They offer no
> experience or insight I might vicariously share. Their poems might as
> well have been written in New Jersey. If that is "cosmopolitanism," it's
> of the type one could find in any Starbucks or Macdonalds in Rio.
|