Description
Book SynopsisIn poems brilliantly textured and layered, Salgado Maranhao integrates socio-political thought with subjects abstractly metaphysical. Concrete collides with conceptual--butcher shops, sex, and machine guns in conversation with language, absence, and time--resulting in a collection varied as well as unified, an aesthetic at once traditional and postmodern. Writing in forms both fixed and free, Maranhao's language suggests a jazz-like musicality that rings true in Alexis Levitin's masterful translations. For readers who enjoy the complexity of Charles Simic, or the stylistically innovative syntax of Cesar Vallejo, Maranhao's Blood of the Sun is a sensually provocative amalgamation of both.
Trade Review"Brazil's northeast is a dry and ancient land. Little visited, it has come to be known outside the country for producing some of its best writing. In Blood of the Sun , Alexis Levitin has given us a perfect English rendering of Salgado Maranhao's deft expression of the tonality of this people and land." --Gregory Rabassa "Alexis Levitin's translation of the Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhao's Blood of the Sun succeeds in negotiating the quirky experimental richness of Maranhao's Pre-Columbian, Amazonian, and Yoruba influences with his traditional rhymed lyrics and jazz-like syncopations. We journey to Brazil's agricultural northeast and out of the expected ballyhoo of Carnival into 'the desolate shelter/ of the flat/ land' and 'beneath the gaze of exhausted time.' We see 'the ritual jewels of Lilian Reyes O/ reign in the entrails/ of vibrant trance.' Levitin skillfully alerts us to the presence of a complex and offbeat poet whose work merits a wide audience." --Colette Inez "The publication of Blood of the Sun [Sol sanguineo] is the felicitous outcome of a spectacular collaboration between one of the most influential and innovative contemporary Brazilian poets and one of the most accomplished English language translators from the Portuguese." --Luiz Fernando Valente, Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University, from the Introduction
