A compilation of poems, prose-poems, and short stories, in the Portuguese language, by 18 members of the literary Yahoo Group "Amante das Leituras" - coordinated by Portuguese author Ana Maria Costa
“What is a word? (…) I prefer to see it as a shiver of creation, a breath carrying a world made of experiences, emotions, memories, dreams, and utopias. And in such breath goes the whole life of he/she who uttered it for the first time, but also the life and knowledge of those who, by seizing it, transform (the word) into the first one once again, because they add to it new and diverse learnings, senses, visions, abandons (…)
It is the greatness of being, and of being here, and of the dimension of individuality, singular and unique!
Each person is the consequence of a universe of words that, being preexistent to him/her, make their connection to the world and to other people in that world, possible. It is in that universe that the language, which will delineate the ideas for him/her to complete, change, own and share – as he/she dreams and lives – is consummated.
A word is, therefore, an idea, thousands of times imparted, whispered, or tossed, and some more thousands of times resigned, abused, pained, cried or laughed (…) by other people who will impart it or toss it again, creating and journeying in it, because each (word) is beginning and end that goes beyond the dimension of the creator and of the creation.
In truth, the work, once it is achieved, builds its own world, which almost never translates the creator’s or the author’s very own one! And he/she knows that!
And so, to (the author) belongs the anguish of writing, of the use, of the confrontation, and of the interplay between the idea and the sign, the symbol and the belief! (…)
To (the author) belongs the anguish of knowing that his/her world, in each (word) pondered, is the one of the human circumstance, also revealed right here, in this book that you are holding in your hands.
And so, as the humble “compére” of the breathers of words that follow, it is my role to simply invite you to open the doors of emotion, making yourself accessible to the visions that they, the words, and they, the authors, offer you!”
-- From the Foreword to the Anthology, by Prof. António M. Oliveira
Authors featured in Antologia Poética “Amante das Leituras” 2008:
Alexandra Oliveira, Ana Maria Costa, Carlos Alberto Roldán (Argentina), Carlos Luanda, Denilson Neves (Brazil), Geraldes de Carvalho, Jorge Vicente, José-Augusto de Carvalho, José Dias Egipto, José Gil, Manuel C. Amor, Maria João Oliveira, Maria Rita Romão, Mónica Correia, Paulo Themudo, Samuel Gomes, Túlio Henrique Pereira (Brazil) and Vera Carvalho.
Excerpt
Translation of “Do caminho que não há” – one of the eight works authored by Alexandra Oliveira (Alexandra* ~ OneLight*®) and featured in the Antologia Poética “Amante das Leituras” 2008)
The way there is not
No, you don’t know the way here; there is no way here, not even an arrival.
There is only, and it’s too much, a chest; mine, at departure, enclosed here.
I wander, like a forest around lost steps. And I count uncountable, loose strands
of hair caught in branches that pant with the effort of being neither more nor less than accessories, in all, and in spite of all, intrinsic; yes, to the trees, as to all of which I couldn’t care less if it whispers or is clothed or denuded of leaves, above my brow.
No, I don’t know the way out of here; out of here, there is no way, not even a river. And yet, I run; I run inwards, more and more still. Staring; yes, my eyes like water, of the kind they always paint in the glades, with the impudence of all the daft, three-dimensional fantasies.
If they knew the way beyond here, they would know that, beyond, there are no dimensions; but, from here, there is no way. There is only, and it’s too little, a space to fill with whatever void may come to the mouth or to the fingers, deaf from pushing away too many colours far more brutish, in their unreality, than a chorus of achromatic squeals, returned by silences gone purple.
Do you get it? No; there is no way, here, where one trips over the clarity of all absences, and where any crossroads are but figures of speech, so out of order in the context that, once overcome, they both obliterate and solve themselves.
Irreversibly, at the end of the beginning of the way there is not.
-- © 2008 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*®
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