de lambuja, um poema traduzido

Ivy G. Wilson Ayo A. Coly Introduction Callaloo Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2007 Special Issue:

Callaloo and the Cultures and Letters of the Black Diaspora.To employ the term diaspora in black cultural studies now is equal parts imperative and elusive. In the wake of recent forceful critiques of nationalism, the diaspora has increasingly come to be understood as a concept—indeed, almost a discourse formation unto itself—that allows for, if not mandates, modes of analysis that are comparative, transnational, global in their perspective. And Callaloo, as a journal of African Diaspora arts and letters, might justly be understood to have a particular relationship to this mandate. For this special issue, we have tried to assemble pieces where the phrase diaspora can find little refuge as a self-reflexive term—a maneuver that seeks to destabilize the facile prefigurations of the word in our current critical vocabulary, where its invocation has too often become idiomatic. More critically, we selected essays that collectively examine the meanings of the Black Diaspora as forms of experiential subjectivity when they intersect with the registers of everyday life through their quotidian engagements with, for example, dance and music, sex and sexuality, and nostalgia and melancholia. With essays on Patricia Powell and Dionne Brand and poetry by Ronald Augusto and Edimilson de Almeida Pereira, this issue underscores the wide canvas of the Americas as a site of the Black Diaspora, taking us through the geographies of this panorama including Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Sea Islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. Taken as a whole, these pieces approach the phrase diaspora self-consciously, as a concept that insists on interrogating blackness as an intricate confluence of multiple histories and cultures

Biobibliographemes

by Ronald Augusto

a sheer thread connects me to the dias
poric literary world
there is always a large amount of debris but
sometimes providence other times recent tracks left behind
steer me to poems of men and
women which demand attention

i’ve browsed through the african continent
its mental culinary from cabinda
which doesn’t quite fit
the lusitanian shape of words
weedy lazio
helps to understand a little better
our seasonings ingredients
islamic blacks
mangoes from goa
jorge de sena a polemicist e. pound
megalomaniac buddy bellicosongbird
or whatever this may mean
in a real deal ulyssean lusiad

and then the sudden apparition of this face
slowly streaming between volumes
through lines of poems this feminine figure
outlines its shape for my appetite
for my library termite curiosity:
irene lisbon
a fescennine definition for her poetry:
it is as if she had given her bivalvular conch
some of it to pessoa some of it
to bandeira but taking pleasure in the best they have to offer
sequined tongues and fellatio
irene lisbon
without the antimoisturizers of the masculine metalanguage
tenterly masturbates and then
smells her fingers
moist from exploring the origins of life
kind irene *

(trasnlated by Isis McElroy)

* Black Irene/ Kind Irene/ Irene always in a good mood./ I imagine Irene entering heaven:/ - “Say there, sir, is it all right if I come in?”/ And Saint Peter, good-natured,/ - “Come on in, Irene. You don’t have to stand there asking.” (“Irene in Heaven”, translated by Candace Slater; in This Earth that Sky: Poems by Manuel Bandeira, U of California P, 1989)


Biobibliografemas
por Ronald Augusto


um fio delgado ligando-me ao mundo dias-
pórico das letras
há sempre muito entulho mas
umas vezes o acaso outras rastros recentes
levam-me a poemas de homens e
mulheres que exigem atenção

folheei o continente africano
sua culinária mental cabinda
que não cabe inteiramente nos
vocábulos da expressão lusitana
lácio daninho
pode-se entender um pouco melhor
nossos condimentos ingredientes
negros islâmicos
mangas de goa
jorge de sena um e. pound polemista
megalômano mano belicanoro
ou o que quer que isso signifique
num lusíada ulisseida da gema

e depois a súbita aparição dessa face
escoando por entre os volumes
esta figura feminina aos poucos por linhas
de poemas se delineando para o meu apetite
para a minha curiosidade de cupim de biblioteca:
irene lisboa
uma definição fescenina para a sua poesia:
é como se ela dera a concha bivalve
um pouco para o pessoa e um outro tanto
para o bandeira mas gozando o melhor de ambos
lantejoulas sobre línguas e felatio
irene lisboa
sem os antiumectantes da metalinguagem masculina
masturba-se com delicadeza e depois
cheira os dedos da mão
úmidos de investigar as origens da vida
irene boa