cegueira

cego de tanta luz

tanta luz que me conduz

me conduz a dizer

a dizer que não consigo viver

não consigo viver sem me ver

cego de tanta luz

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

On free spirits ...

“He is called a free spirit who thinks differently from what, on the basis of his origin, environment, his class and profession, or on the basis of the dominant views of the age, would have been expected of him. He is the exception, the fettered spirits are the rule …. what characterizes the free spirit is not that his opinions are the more correct but that he has liberated himself from tradition, whether the outcome has been successful or a failure. As a rule, though, he will nonetheless have truth on his side, or at least the spirit of inquiry after truth: he demands reasons, the rest demand faith.”

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. §225. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale.)

tudo em vão

-- para o "Vovô" Ashley

o velho olha para trás,
até ver o jovem
que olha para frente
até se ver velho
antes e depois do seu tempo.

que diabo é esse
anjo que caiu?
o homen sonhou com asas
e ao criá-las, subiu

um deus aos céus – adeus!

e no espelho dos seus olhos,
o reflexo da reflexão:
nos olhos do espelho
se reflete tudo em vão …

Copyright © 2005 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

Peanut Butter & Jelly + Bloody Mary

Samuel Ashley Brown, college professor, writer, and scholar, died from natural causes on June 24, 2011, at Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community, Columbia, SC. Born in Louisville, Kentucky on December 19, 1923, to the late Samuel Ashley and Martha Mabel Brown, he was preceded in death by his brother, Robert Holburn Brown, and niece, Carol Brown Wildt.

                He received his BA at the University of Louisville in 1945 and his MA at Vanderbilt University in 1946, where he later received his PhD in 1958. In between his graduate degrees he did graduate studies in historiography at Yale University, 1950-51, and taught as an Instructor in English at Washington and Lee, 1946-53, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1956-59. From 1959 he taught at the University of South Carolina, Columbia SC, where he was a Full Professor of English and Comparative Literature from 1972 until his retirement in 1996. He was also a two-time Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1964-65 and 1971-72.

                Known to everyone as Ashley, he lectured widely in Brazil, England, and the U.S. on such modern writers as Mario de Andrade, Elizabeth Bishop, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Caroline Gordon, Ernest Hemingway, Vinicius de Moraes, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, John Crowe Ransom, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, and Peter Taylor.  He also published extensively on many of these authors and others in leading literary journals, including Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, which he helped to found in 1950 while teaching at the college, The Southern Humanities Review, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. He personally knew many of these same writers, especially Elizabeth Bishop and Flannery O’Connor, and carried on extensive correspondence with them.

                He is survived by his brother Franklin R. Brown and sister-in-law Carolyn Brown, one niece and two nephews, and several great nieces and one great nephew. Also by his adopted son Celso Lemos de Oliveira, his wife Bernadette, and their children Laura and Marco.

                As his longtime friend (since 1952) and then colleague John L. Kimmey commented recently after reading what he deservedly called Ashley’s “remarkable resumé”: “He always prided himself in being not a specialist but a generalist, sort of like his hero Montaigne.” He and Ashley collaborated on seven anthologies, and perhaps John’s last comments on Ashley are the ones that Ashley himself might want to be remembered by: “So much more to say about him. One of my favorites is his telling me once what he liked for lunch, a peanut butter sandwich and a Bloody Mary. An original.”

                He will be buried in Louisville, Kentucky in the family plot.

Plans for a memorial will be announced at a later date.

-- Dr. George Geckle

Flowers of Poetry …

"How poetry is related to music through prosody, the roots of which go deeper into the human soul than any classical theory indicates"

"Why any poet who does not know exactly how many rhymes each word has is incapable of expressing any idea whatever"

"That the poetic phrase can imitate (and in this, poetry is like the art of music and the science of mathematics) a horizontal line, an ascending or descending vertical line; that it can rise straight up to heaven without losing its breath, or fall straight down to hell with the velocity of any weight; that it can follow a spiral, describe a parabola, or can zigzag, making a series of superimposed angles"

"That poetry is like the arts of painting, cooking, and cosmetics in its ability to express every sensation of sweetness or bitterness, of beatitude or horror, by coupling a certain noun with a certain adjective, in analogy or contrast"


(Charles Baudelaire, "Preface to the Flowers." Trans. J.M.)

love & life

love looked life
in the eye
and said:

yes!

life stabbed love
in the heart
and said:
 
nothing …

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

desordem e regresso (versão 2)

 

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

From "natural" to "social" man ...

“Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten your unfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this feeling should be a panegyric on your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunates who will come after you.”

…

“What, then, is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? Must meum and tuum be annihilated, and must we return again to the forests to live among bears? This is a deduction in the manner of my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate as let them have the shame of drawing. O you, who have never heard the voice of heaven, who think man destined only to live this little life and die in peace; you, who can resign in the midst of populous cities your fatal acquisitions, your restless spirits, your corrupt hearts and endless desires; resume, since it depends entirely on ourselves, your ancient and primitive innocence: retire to the woods, there to lose the sight and remembrance of the crimes of your contemporaries; and be not apprehensive of degrading your species, by renouncing its advances in order to renounce its vices. As for men like me, whose passions have destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer subsist on plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates; those who were honoured in their first father with supernatural instructions; those who discover, in the design of giving human actions at the start a morality which they must otherwise have been so long in acquiring, the reason for a precept in itself indifferent and inexplicable on every other system; those, in short, who are persuaded that the Divine Being has called all mankind to be partakers in the happiness and perfection of celestial intelligences, all these will endeavour to merit the eternal prize they are to expect from the practice of those virtues, which they make themselves follow in learning to know them. They will respect the sacred bonds of their respective communities; they will love their fellow-citizens, and serve them with all their might: they will scrupulously obey the laws, and all those who make or administer them …. But they will not therefore have less contempt for a constitution that cannot support itself without the aid of so many splendid characters, much oftener wished for than found; and from which, notwithstanding all their pains and solicitude, there always arise more real calamities than even apparent advantages.”

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men.  Trans. G. D. H. Cole)

desentender

você e eu,
ninguém cedeu,
você e eu

ninguém cedeu,
alguém perdeu,
ninguém cedeu

alguém perdeu,
tudo fudeu,
alguém perdeu

tudo fudeu,
nada valeu,
tudo fudeu

nada valeu,
você e eu,
nada valeu

você e eu ...
(se sente que)
você e eu ...
(a gente se)
você e eu ...
(desentendeu)


Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

um belo dia

um belo dia de manhã o sol nasceu de novo e se escondeu atrás de uma nuvem que de tarde cobriu o céu e assombrou a terra de noite com uma chuva que afogou a madrugada e apagou a promessa de amanhã ser um belo dia ...

Copyright © 2012 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

acesso

acesso fechado:
assim eu passo
pelo outro lado

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

sensual poem

see you
hear you
smell you
touch you
taste you

feel you
all over

in me

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

poema sensual

– para tê


ver-te
ouvir-te
cheirar-te
tocar-te
provar-te

sentir-te
toda

em mim

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

on progress ...

Some think the world is getting better and better. Others think the world is getting worse and worse. If everyone thought the world was getting much better or worse, then that would be worst. If no one thought the world was getting any better or worse, then that would be best.

– gringocarioca

renewal

In honor of northern spring: the fruit of work. In honor of southern autumn: the harvest of labor. In honor of World Poetry Day: a collection of words.

Please check out the relaunch of:

http://gringocarioca.com/

Enjoy!

La búsqueda del presente ...

“Sentí que el mundo se escindía: yo no estaba en el presente. Mi ahora se disgregó: el verdadero tiempo estaba en otra parte. Mi tiempo ... era un tiempo ficticio. A pesar del testimonio de mis sentidos, el tiempo de allá, el de los otros, era el verdadero, el tiempo del presente real. Acepté lo inaceptable .... Así comenzó mi expulsión del presente.”

“Decir que hemos sido expulsados del presente puede parecer una paradoja. No: es una experiencia que todos hemos sentido alguna vez; algunos la hemos vivido primero como una condena y después transformada en conciencia y acción. La búsqueda del presente no es la búsqueda del edén terrestre ni de la eternidad sin fechas: es la búsqueda de la realidad real.”

“Comencé a escribir poemas. No sabía qué me llevaba a escribirlos: estaba movido por una necesidad interior difícilmente definible. Apenas ahora he comprendido que entre lo que he llamado mi expulsión del presente y escribir poemas había una relación secreta. La poesía está enamorada del instante y quiere revivirlo en un poema; lo aparta de la sucesión y lo convierte en presente fijo. Pero en aquella época yo escribía sin preguntarme por qué lo hacía. Buscaba la puerta de entrada al presente ....”

“Así como hemos tenido filosofías del pasado y del futuro, de la eternidad y de la nada, mañana tendremos una filosofía del presente. La experiencia poética puede ser una de sus bases. ¿Qué sabemos del presente? Nada o casi nada. Pero los poetas saben algo: el presente es el manantial de las presencias.”

“Entonces las puertas de la percepción se entreabren y aparece el otro tiempo, el verdadero, el que buscábamos sin saberlo: el presente, la presencia.”


(Octavio Paz, Conferencia Nobel 1990)

La búsqueda de la modernidad ...

“Buscaba la puerta de entrada al presente: quería ser de mi tiempo y de mi siglo. Un poco después esta obsesión se volvió idea fija: quise ser un poeta moderno. Comenzó mi búsqueda de la modernidad.”

“¿Qué es la modernidad? Ante todo, es un término equívoco: hay tantas modernidades como sociedades. Cada una tiene la suya. Su significado es incierto y arbitrario .... Un nombre que cambia con el tiempo, ¿es un verdadero nombre? La modernidad es una palabra en busca de su significado: ¿es una idea, un espejismo o un momento de la historia? ¿Somos hijos de la modernidad o ella es nuestra creación? Nadie lo sabe a ciencia cierta. Poco importa: la seguimos, la perseguimos.”

“No referiré mis aventuras en la persecusión de la modernidad: son las de casi todos los poetas de nuestro siglo. La modernidad ha sido una pasión universal .... En los últimos años se ha pretendido exorcizarla y se habla mucho de la ‘postmodernidad’. ¿Pero qué es la postmodernidad sino una modernidad aún más moderna?”

“La búsqueda de la modernidad nos llevó a descubrir nuestra antigüedad .... Inesperada lección histórica que no sé si todos han aprendido: entre tradición y modernidad hay un puente. Aisladas, las tradiciones se petrifican y las modernidades se volatilizan; en conjunción, una anima a la otra y la otra le responde dándole peso y gravedad.”

“La búsqueda de la modernidad poética fue una verdadera quéte, en el sentido alegórico y caballeresco que tenía esa palabra .... Porque la modernidad no es una escuela poética sino un linaje, una familia esparcida en varios continentes y que durante dos siglos ha sobrevivido a muchas vicisitudes y desdichas .... Ser una tradición y no una doctrina le ha permitido, simultáneamente, permanecer y cambiar. También le ha dado diversidad: cada aventura poética es distinta y cada poeta ha plantado un árbol diferente en este prodigioso bosque parlante. Si las obras son diversas y los caminos distintos, ¿qué une a todos estos poetas? No una estética sino la búsqueda. Mi búsqueda no fue quimérica, aunque la idea de modernidad sea un espejismo, un haz de reflejos. Un día descubrí que no avanzaba sino que volvía al punto de partida: la búsqueda de la modernidad era un descenso a los orígenes. La modernidad me condujo a mi comienzo, a mi antigüedad. La ruptura se volvió reconciliación. Supe así que el poeta es un latido en el río de las generaciones.”

“La modernidad es la punta del movimiento histórico, la encarnación de la evolución o de la revolución, las dos caras del progreso.”

“Asistimos al crepúsculo del futuro. La baja de la idea de modernidad, y la boga de una noción tan dudosa como ‘postmodernidad’, no son fenómenos que afecten únicamente a las artes y a la literatura: vivimos la crisis de las ideas y creencias básicas que han movido a los hombres desde hace más de dos siglos.”

“En mi peregrinación en busca de la modernidad me perdí y me encontré muchas veces. Volví a mi origen y descubrí que la modernidad no está afuera sino adentro de nosotros. Es hoy y es la antigüedad más antigua, es mañana y es el comienzo del mundo, tiene mil años y acaba de nacer .... Presente intacto, recién desenterrado, que se sacude el polvo de siglos, sonríe y, de pronto, se echa a volar y desaparece por la ventana. Simultaneidad de tiempos y de presencias: la modernidad rompe con el pasado inmediato sólo para rescatar al pasado milenario y convertir a una figurilla de fertilidad del neolítico en nuestra contemporánea. Perseguimos a la modernidad en sus incesantes metamorfosis y nunca logramos asirla. Se escapa siempre: cada encuentro es una fuga. La abrazamos y al punto se disipa: sólo era un poco de aire. Es el instante, ese pájaro que está en todas partes y en ninguna. Queremos asirlo vivo pero abre las alas y se desvanece, vuelto un puñado de sílabas. Nos quedamos con las manos vacías.”


(Octavio Paz, Conferencia Nobel 1990)

on vocation ...

“By this time I should have been delivered of any problems about my true identity. I had already made my simple profession. And my vows should have divested me of the last shreds of any special identity.

But then there was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister.

He is still on my track. He rides my shoulders, sometimes, like the old man of the sea. I cannot lose him. He still wears the name of …. Is it the name of an enemy?

He is supposed to be dead.”

…

“Maybe in the end he will kill me, he will drink my blood.

Nobody seems to understand that one of us has got to die.

Sometimes I am mortally afraid. There are the days when there seems to be nothing left of my vocation – my contemplative vocation – but a few ashes. And everybody calmly tells me: ‘Writing is your vocation.’”

(Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.)

diálogos (des)familares 3

Descansado


Filho: Tô muito cansado.

Pai: Quer descansar?

Filho: Tô cansado de descansar!


Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

tudo está sob descontrole

Copyright © 2011 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira