Poetry
Dirty Poem
Poema sujo
Ferreira Gullar · 1976
Synopsis
A long poem of more than two thousand lines, written in exile, in which the author returns to his childhood and adolescence in São Luís do Maranhão: the family, the town by the sea, the years of the Second World War. The flow of verse blends memory with a meditation on the body, memory, time, love and social inequality, and moves from measured, rhymed verse to free speech, onomatopoeia and directions for reading aloud.
Context
Written in Argentina in 1975, in a manner of writing that its author called almost automatic, while he feared being reduced to silence, the poem reached Brazil thanks to a recording made by Vinícius de Moraes, according to Cultura Genial. Ênio Silveira published it in 1976 at Civilização Brasileira, and its publication marked the author's return to the country, according to the Portuguese publisher's notice. The critic Otto Maria Carpeaux called it a “national poem”. Its author said it was dirty like the Brazilian people and his life.
Who it is for
A poem in a single piece, alternating measured passages, free verse and reading directions.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by the Imprensa Nacional as one of the great works in the Portuguese language of the century; translated into French in 2005 and into English.
Sources for this page 7
The pages consulted to check this page.