Birds for a Demolition, Manoel de Barros

Translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey

“Poetry is to flap without wings.”

Birds for a Demolition is a compilation of a variety of poetry styles by Manoel de Barros, with some arranged more formally in stanzas and others appearing as short proverbs. A repeating topic is his early life in Brazil, in a region called the Pantanal. His small town and his childhood home next to a river clearly holds significance. He talks about the river often, and even uses the word as a verb at times. His voice is both somber and humorous, and when he gets a bit nostalgic, he reveals both.

In Invented Memoir II, he writes of his birthday as a boy, when his mother had no gift to give him. So she gave him a river.

…The same river that had always passed behind our house.
I liked the gift more than if it had been candy from the peddler.
My brother pouted, he liked the river as well.
Our mother promised him he’d get a tree for his birthday.
A tree covered in birds.
I heard this promise and thought it was fine.
The birds would spend the day on the banks of my river.
At night, they’d sleep in my brother’s tree.
My brother teased that his present got flowers in September.
And a river doesn’t get flowers!
I told him a tree doesn’t get piranhas.
What united us was swimming naked in the river with the herons.
In this regard, our life was a caress.

Apparently, the river was something he held on to, both as a personal touchstone and a poetic motif.  While the poetry within this covers almost 50 years of his work, the focus remains much the same. Vines, lizards, adobe buildings, trees, and even ants are woven into more serious topics.

In Ants,

I didn’t need to read Saint Paul, Saint Augustine,
Saint Jerome, or Thomas of Aquinas,
Not even Saint Francis of Assisi---
To arrive at God.
Ants showed him to me.

(I have a doctorate in ants).

In just these six lines he does two things: reveals his inferred truth regarding life and creation, yet throws in a twist of humor with his doctorate remark. This pattern of mixing the serious with the blithe makes the collection much more vibrant and appealing. He does this in short proverbs in “The Book of Nothing”:

There are many serious ways to say nothing, but only poetry is true.


My dawn is going to open at dusk.


To have more certainty I have to know more imperfections.


I wanted to be read by stones.


Words hide me without much care.


Wherever I am not, words find me.


There are histories so true that at times it seems they are invented.


I want the word that fits in the beak of a small bird.

Note that the proverb style he uses above uses large breaks of space (caesuras or caesurae??) to give you time to stop and reflect rather than move quickly through the verses. 

Lastly, he applies a paragraph form to some self-deprecating words of explanation in a section called "Desiring to Be":  "I write an archaic Manoel-esque idiolect (Idiolect is the dialect idiots use to speak to the walls and with the flies.)  I need to upset meanings.  Purposelessness is healthier than solemnity.  (To cleanse a certain solemnity from words, I use manure.)...The cerebral touches in my writing are just a precaution to avoid succumbing to the temptation to make myself less foolish than others.  I am highly regarded for my foolishness.  Of this I deliver certainty."

Special thanks to Cynthia Lamb of Carnegie Mellon University Press
 for this Advance Review Copy. 

This title releases today, September 30, 2010.

A Salute to Spanish Poetry, John Howard Reid

100 Masterpieces from Spain & Latin America

This is a diverse collection of poets and their poetry, lovingly translated by John Howard Reid, from the original Spanish or Portuguese. Despite the varying geographical origins, many of the topics are united: the shades of gray in shadows, the play of light and darkness, and the mysterious reflections of water, fog, and mist. Loneliness is a common theme, as is a feeling of desolation. But rather than dissolving into a sea of melancholy, this collection features other poems that illuminate playful charm, delicate romance, and unyielding devotion.

One of my favorites is from Jose Juan Tablada:    

An Alternative Nocturne:

Golden New Yorker nights

Cold walls of Moorish limestone

A champagne foxtrot from Earl Fuller’s Rector Novelty Orchestra

Mute houses and barred windows

Glancing around

Over the silent roofs

The soul is petrified

White cats outlined against the moon

Like Lot’s wife

And yet

For all that,

It’s the same

In New York

And Bogota!

The Moon…!

The art of the collection lies in the translation from the varying languages and their particular dialects and styles. Some of the poets featured are Delmira Agustini from Uruguay, Carlos Oquendo de Amat from Peru, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and Federico Garcia Lorca from Spain, Brazil’s Olavo Bilac, Argentina’s Leopoldo Lugones, and Julian del Casal from Cuba. Notably, Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is also included with his poem The Gypsy. Sixteenth century poets mingle with modern playwrights in a readable collection that never gets too heavy or depressing, or worse, too scholarly (and therefore inaccessible). The way the poems are linked in the order that they are featured must have some significance, because they seem to lead into each other, giving them a sense of a greater story in play, a novelization of similar thoughts. 

This is a comprehensive collection featuring more than 50 well known and lesser known poets.  I found it fascinating to explore the poetry of poets I would have never discovered on my own.

Special thanks to the translator, John Howard Reid, for sending me the collection for review.

It is available on Amazon.com.