44 poems
(Leça
da Palmeira, Venade and Torre da Medronheira, 2012-2015)
HiddenRiver Press, Philadelphia, Pennysylvania, USA, 2023
translation
Calvin Olsen
editor
Debra Leigh Scott
Cover
photo Ulises León
Cover
design Mariangel Briceno Diaz
Willow Run Poetry Book Award 2020/2021
§
ILYA KAMINSKY, author of Deaf Republic
«I
love the deep attentiveness to the world in these poems. But even more so: I
love how this attentiveness is handed to us with language that is graceful
rather than heavy or full of pronouncements; there is play and there is much
reality, and all of it is filled with metaphysics but not weighted down by it.
It is like classical music, in this effect. And, I love that. I know I
will be looking to read new translations of these writings anywhere I can
find them. Truly.»
LULJETA LLESHANAKU, author of Negative Space
«What takes a Mediterranean poet on a meditative journey across the
Mediterranean, from Bridal Veil in Porto Moniz, to the Wall of Solomon, to
ruins of a Roman palace in Split, to a flower market in Provence,,,? It reminds
us of a familiar expression: ‘If you lose your way, go back to where you
started!’ This is exactly what I think makes João Luís Barreto Guimarães’s adventure unique: he reflects the
modern consciousness onto the face of our history of civilization ‘where time itself is holding its breath’. The poetry in Mediterranean
reflects about what we have lost and are losing every day, mastering questions
and revelations that, articulated in the right place and the right moment, with
such a poetic finesse as here, stays with us much longer after the Mediterranean
scent is gone.»
MARKO POGAČAR, author of Dead Letter Office
«This is, above all, the aestheticization of everyday, colloquial
language, and its hybridization with references to high culture, a fine and
well-balanced irony, with a subtle humorous edge. The lightness and warmth of a
lyrical smile that sometimes spills over into the laughter of lovers and, on
other occasions, into that of an observer of a banal street event, but which never
turns into a noisy and strident laugh. (...) Guimarães' work is also one of the proofs that Portuguese poetry is
still alive and vital, and that it is not reduced to the beautiful and hundred-headed
hydra, now iconic, that is Pessoa.»
§
