Monday, July 23, 2007

Totally Useless ! ? !

"Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions."

(Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus)

Saturday, July 21, 2007

To Be

. . .
The child I never made
today would be a man.
Fleshless and nameless,
he runs with the wind.

Sometimes I find him
lost in the clouds.
He leans on my shoulder
With no shoulder of his own.

I ask my child,
a breath of air:
in what cave or shell
do you abstractly dwell?

There where I lay,
a breeze responds,
you didn’t notice me
though I called you

as I still call you
(beyond, beyond love)
where nothing, everything
aspires to be created.

The child I never made
is made by himself.



gringocarioca



Ser


O filho que não fiz
hoje seria homem.
Ele corre na brisa,
sem carne, sem nome.

Às vezes o encontro
num encontro de nuvem.
Apóia em meu ombro
seu ombro nenhum.

Interrogo meu filho,
objeto de ar:
em que gruta ou concha
quedas abstrato?

Lá onde eu jazia,
responde-me o hálito,
não me percebeste
contudo chamava-te

como ainda te chamo
(além, além do amor)
onde nada, tudo
aspira a criar-se.

O filho que não fiz
faz-se por si mesmo.


Carlos Drummond de Andrade


a word is what a word does . . .

Copyright © 2007 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

blocks of time





Copyright © 2007 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Monday, July 16, 2007

separação

Copyright © 2007 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Metaform

A thing exists to be something –
But if the word is a thing,
It might be nothing.

A form exists to have content –
But if the word has a form,
It might have no meaning.

So never mean for a word
To reveal the content of its form –
Its form means everynothing as it is –
For by means of the word it is meant to be
That a form means to become
Meaningful.

Let the form of the word be,
Let the thing mean by itself,
Form anything in formless form,
Let it be metaform!


gringocarioca




Metáfora

Uma lata existe para conter algo
Mas quando o poeta diz: "Lata"
Pode estar querendo dizer o incontível

Uma meta existe para ser um alvo
Mas quando o poeta diz: "Meta"
Pode estar querendo dizer o inatingível

Por isso, não se meta a exigir do poeta
Que determine o conteúdo em sua lata
Na lata do poeta tudonada cabe
Pois ao poeta cabe fazer
Com que na lata venha caber
O incabível

Deixe a meta do poeta, não discuta
Deixe a sua meta fora da disputa
Meta dentro e fora, lata absoluta
Deixe-a simplesmente metáfora


Gilberto Gil

Sunday, July 08, 2007

(Modern) Poetry and the Word . . .

“it is the Word which gratifies and fulfills like the sudden revelation of a truth. To say that this truth is of a poetic order is merely to say that the Word in poetry can never be untrue, because it is a whole; it shines with an infinite freedom and prepares to radiate towards innumerable uncertain and possible connections . . . . it is like a monolith, or pillar which plunges into a totality of meanings, reflexes and recollections: it is a sign which stands.”

“Thus under each Word in modern poetry there lies a sort of existential geology, in which is gathered the total content of the Name . . . . Each poetic word is thus an unexpected object, a Pandora’s box from which fly out all the potentialities of language”


(Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero)

To Picture Writing As Such . . .

“But is it quite beyond doubt that the development of writing will not indefinitely be bound by the claims to power of a chaotic academic and commercial activity; rather, quantity is approaching the moment of a qualitative leap when writing, advancing ever more deeply into the graphic regions of its new eccentric figurativeness, will take sudden possession of an adequate factual content.

In this picture writing, poets, who will now as in earliest times be first and foremost experts in writing, will be able to participate only by mastering the fields in which (quite unobtrusively) it is being constructed: the statistical and technical diagram. With the foundation of an international moving script they will renew their authority in the life of peoples, and find a role awaiting them in comparison to which all the innovative aspiration of rhetoric will reveal themselves as antiquated day-dreams.”


(Walter Benjamin, “One Way Street.” Trans. Edmund Jephcott)

Friday, July 06, 2007

Writer's Block

Copyright © 2007 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira