tentava bonvicino

I spent some time with Etc today (by Régis Bonvicino, tr Odile Cisneros).

First time I read through this, not much registered. Short stanzas, a slow wordiness, dot dot dot

Stating the obvious is sometimes helpful.

A Brazilian poet. The shape on the page is 4 parts, all titled Etc. Each of the four is in two vertical sub parts separated by a dot. Each of those subparts is composed of three quatrains, for a total of 24 quatrains. The whole thing is doubled side-by-side, on the left in the original Portuguese and on the right in the translated English. So it is mathematically precise to that extent, nothing out of alignment.

The lines within each quatrain are more irregular, sometimes with only one word (“tentava”), sometimes a longer stretch of several words.

There is one word I do not understand and Google is no help and it is the same in the original as in the translation: sigdasys.

There is one invented compound word “firetalk” that is the same in the original as in the translation.

How much patience do I have?

:::

There is a lot of trying in the poem. “Tentava” appears five or six times. There is a lot of triggering series of words off an action. Feeling, pointing, trying, reaching, probing, beating, observing, competing.

There is a stateliness stepping through this piece, a slowness. There is no stated “I” but the I seems to be doing the actions.

There are animals, flowers, colors, weathers, spaces – prisons, walls, gardens. The poem opens with weapons. There is Art – Frank Lloyd Wright and a painter, Emil Nolde is mentioned twice. The poem closes with a horse in the sky and the final reference to Nolde.

:::

To engage with this poem, it would take further study. I don’t know what it would bring me. I don’t feel drawn to it very intensely. It does not seem engaged with the natural world, although it does seem engaged with the human world. I feel like there is a painting somewhere that I need to see to go forward with this poem.

Not saying I will never return to it, but not seeing why I would, unless it is to play with a translator program.