Aqui estão as minhas contas: antologia poética by Adília LopesSofia de Sousa Silva

Abstract

Reviews 290 (pp. 22–24) and POSLAPSO [POSTLAPSE] (pp. 90–92). A pathway with entrance doors but with no foreseeable exit so far. ‘PORTA 2’ [DOOR 2] (pp. 13–16) describes the pathway to a time with no drama or urgent desire to escape; ‘PORTA GIRATÓRIA’ [REVOLVING DOOR] (pp. 17–21) describes a western eschatology that collects the interests accrued from our faith in money. The book’s end resumes the dialogue found at the beginning — ‘Periandro de Corinto, filho de Cypsélos, disse: “O descanso é uma coisa boa!” | Alberto do Porto, dito Mínimo, observou: “Estou de acordo contigo!”’ [Periander of Corinth, son of Cypselus, said, ‘Resting is a good thing!’ | Alberto of Porto, also known as Mininum, observed, ‘I agree with you!’]. But it is still not the end. After this, instead of an index, we can read ‘DISSE’ [I SAID]. We are again attracted by sounds. Even more: the book that announced itself through a verb in the first person, present tense — zombo [I mock] — now meets a first person from the past — I said. And this is still not the end. In the book’s colophon the fly persists; and on the back cover, lonely and wise, lies the large and venerable ear. The quest for the unexpected continues. ZOMBO is a book that succeeds in accomplishing what poetry does best: sewing together a singular time with a collective time; sewing together a time that was with a time that is — read, apropos, the ‘SONETO ERRÁTICO com duas caudas (ou codas para pessoas distintas)’ [ERRATIC SONNET with a double tail (or codas for distinguished people)] (p. 115).6 And, along the way, who knows, one may blow away or squash a few flies. Adília Lopes, Aqui estão as minhas contas: antologia poética, ed. with preface by Sofia de Sousa Silva (Rio de Janeiro: Bazar do tempo, 2019). 199 pages. Print. Reviewed by Jerónimo Pizarro (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia) In 2019, in the Atlântica collection, which ‘seeks to present a panorama of the best Portuguese poetry in Brazil’, an anthology of poems by Adília Lopes was published. Adília Lopes is a poet who in Brazil has had a very positive reception and has been read by authors of several generations. The anthology, selected and prefaced by Sofia de Sousa Silva, appeared a year after another one made in Colombia and published by a publisher in Medellín: Tragaluz. Adília Lopes’s work is being increasingly read and studied outside Portugal, though it remains to be seen whether it will be also within her own country, where it collides with the poetics of other writers, although many defend her — and her ‘rather dangerous game’, to recall her first book of verses — and she has many devoted readers. In Brazil, where the 2019 anthology was published, ‘Adília Lopes was first published in May 2001, in the 10th issue of the poetry magazine Inimigo Rumor’, as Silva mentions in her preface. The anthologist adds that in 2002 the São Paulo 6 Translator’s note: once more, the author puns on the similarity between the word cauda meaning ‘tail’ and coda, ‘coda’. Reviews 291 publisher Cosac Naify, now defunct, published, in the collection Ás de Colete, a selection of her poetry, and that in 2018, the independent publishing house Moinhos published Um jogo bastante perigoso — and did so with remarkable enthusiasm: ‘Owner of a unique imagination, [her] poetry is able to trip up the reader spectacularly, mixing the language of quantum mechanics and encrypted quotes to/from classic authors, with the mental logic of neighbours, old aunts, porcelain dolls, mundane life in Lisbon, and geckos [lizards from Portugal], leaving us helpless — and in love’ (see foreword). The recently published carioca anthology contributes to getting to know Adília Lopes beyond 2002 and it is now the best book, for those who live in Brazil, or for those who do not want to begin with Dobra, to discover an anti-poet that only those who do not only write conventional poetry can read laughing and with passion. In Brazil, where ‘the strong colloquialism of Adília Lopes, as well...