Angélica Freitas
What is a tschüsstschüss?
tschüsstschüss is an hastalavista
un adieu with no handkerchiefs
some keep on writing haikus
three lines as bashõ
a tschüsstschüss also follows schools
writers of tschüsstschüss know it's over
as soon as they say "lover"
#
abused as a child she wets her feet in the orinoco
what is the underwater sound of ocarinas?
brbrlllbrrrr brbrlllbrrrr
#
snobbed in parties she wets her feet in the nyle
what is the underwater beat of thy chest?
"careful in the street" "come straight home"
#
pale-faced sufragette wets her feet in the mississipi
what is the underwater motion of thy headgear-hair
do?
right.... left.... right.... left....
#
unphotogenic for magazines she wets her feet in the seine
what is the underwater ringtone of thy mobile?
"after the signal lorelei after the signal"
Love, a collage
During a drunken argument in Brussels, Verlaine
shot at Rimbaud, hitting him once in the wrist On 10
July 1875, in a drunken quarrel in Brussels,
Verlaine shot Rimbaudin the wrist, and was
imprisoned for two years at Mons. Together again in
Brussels in the summer of that year, Verlaine shot
Rimbaud in the wrist following a drunken argument.
Verlaine, drunk and desolate, shot Rimbaud in the
wristwith a 7mm pistol after a quarrel. At one
point, the tension between them became so great
that Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist. about 2
o'clock,when M. Paul Verlaine, in his mother's
bedroom, fired a shot of revolver. the subject of
various books, films, and curiosities, ended July
12, 1873 when a drunken Verlaine shot at Rimbaud and
injured him in the wrist. Verlaine shot Rimbaud in a
fit of drunken jealousy.
sereia a sério
o cruel era que por mais bela
por mais que os rasgos ostentassem
fidelíssimas genéticas aristocráticas
e as mãos fossem hábeis
no manejo de bordados e frangos assados
e os cabelos atestassem
pentes de tartaruga e grande cuidado
a perplexidade seria sempre
com o rabo da sereia
não quero contar a história
depois de andersen & co.
todos conhecem as agruras
primeiro o desejo impossível
pelo príncipe (boneco em traje de gala)
depois a consciência
de uma macumba poderosa
em troca deixa-se algo
a voz, o hímen elástico
a carteira de sócia do méditerranée
são duros os procedimentos
bípedes femininas se enganam
imputando a saltos altos
a dor mais acertada à altivez
pois
a sereia pisa em facas quando usa os pés
e quem a leva a sério?
melhor seria um final
em que voltasse ao rabo original
e jamais se depilasse
em vez do elefante dançando no cérebro
quando ela encontra o príncipe
e dos 36 dedos
que brotam quando ela estende a mão
This executioner's songs
The work of Angélica Freitas and her refusal to settle for authoritarian poetics.
by Ricardo Domeneck
The work of Angélica Freitas moves and acts in a climate of no distinctions or separations between life and art, high or pop, to whom such borders simply make no sense, are meaningless. No reason to blur borders for whom they do not exist, therefore failing to distinguish levels of prestige in culture. Publishing in a Brazilian poetic context that follows critical axioms which have been frozen for the last decades, based on abstract concepts as "precision" or "concreteness" as values in themselves, her poems establish a new path for a relationship with a non-authoritarian tradition.
Even though she claims in interviews that her wish is to delight, entertain her readers, the ethic/esthetic reach and result (Wittgenstein made no distinction between them) has much broader connotations. Angélica Freitas is the anti-authoritarian poet through and through, and therefore dethrones any literary imposture attempting to hierarchize the ranks between writer and reader. Her call for a "demallarming" is no declaration of war against Stéphane Mallarmé, but the laughter which unmasks the arrogance of the quotation which seeks in works of the past the lost authority of poetry in contemporary culture.
Angélica Freitas does not need to rob or loot the so-called tradition to conquer the respect and attention of her readers. She guides poetry back to a healthier relationship with orality, without getting lost in naive defenses of the "natural" or "sincere", as the marginal poets of the 70s, with whom it would be a mistake to associate Freitas. She acknowledges the writing as artifice, language itself as artifice, written or spoken, which in her poems are once again reunited as for a long time they were no longer seen/heard. The conscious preoccupation with the materiality of language is however not abandoned, as we read in the series of "Baibais" or even in "Vida aérea" or "R.C.", in which the pop and cultured references come with their original flow. Gertrude Stein, who would be filed under "high art reference" today, knew that classicizing is the weapon of idiots who want to neutralize the beauty which still annoys, disturbs, as she wrote in her "Composition as Explanation".
In a moment when Brazilian poetry still seems preoccupied and obsessed with notions of concreteness, objectivity, crystalized in "good taste", Angélica Freitas gives us a book where poetry breathes as a healthy barbarian. It is tempting to try to affiliate her in poetic families, as every new poet is obliged to sign forms in which he/she joins a party/school/nationality, in order to be allowed into a literary system, canon, history addicted to the linear.
This poet, however, is among those who abandoned the role of "artist-demiurgue" and go on as cultural interventionists. Her poetry can only be understood in the anti-lineages of poets such as Christian Morgenstern, in his "Galgenlieder", Hans Arp of Dada Zürich, the Wiener Gruppe (H.C. Artmann, Konrad Bayer), Susanna Thénon in her "Ova Completa", Gertrude Stein in her "Lifting Belly", or the work of Alberto Pimenta or Adília Lopes. She breathes with the singing lungs of a Heinrich Heine, and other critics have associated her with French poets like Jules Laforgue and Tristan Corbière. To entertain, many times, as redirecting the sores of a restless conscience to other shores, the "I", not of a "lyrical I", but of a litigal I, with which Angélica Freitas masks her humor, her executioner's songs, pain still dripping through the cracks of her pained humor, chewing self-deprecation, as Elizabeth Bishop also tried to convince herself that she was not bothered by loss in "One Art", playing calm while love dissolved her entrails.
It should not be necessary to use a sthetoscope to realize there is much more than jokes in her texts. And not only in the clearly painful ones such as "Siobhan 4", but even in texts like "What is a ciaociao'" or "Love me". I have no doubt we have found a poet who might rescue poetry from the manuals of etiquette and good taste, to give it back to her rightful owners: us all.
Here, her lied "Love", a googlage, in which she keeps even the misprints chance left there, Cage-like:
During a drunken argument in Brussels, Verlaine
shot atRimbaud, hitting him once in the wrist On 10
July 1875, in a drunken quarrel in Brussels,
Verlaine shot Rimbaudin the wrist, and was
imprisoned for two years at Mons. Together again in
Brussels in the summer of that year, Verlaine shot
Rimbaud in the wrist following a drunken argument.
Verlaine, drunk and desolate, shot Rimbaud in the
wristwith a 7mm pistol after a quarrel. At one
point, the tension between them became so great
thatVerlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist. about 2
o'clock,when M. Paul Verlaine, in his mother's
bedroom, fired a shot of revolver. the subject of
various books, films, and curiosities, ended July
12, 1873 when a drunken Verlaine shot at Rimbaud and
injured him in the wrist. Verlaine shot Rimbaud in a
fit of drunken jealousy.
Oh, and to know the mistaken monkeys who take themselves as poet-priests are simply unable to grasp it should only be found amusing rather than irritating.
Original poem in Portuguese
o que é um baibai?
baibai es un adios.
un farewell sin pañuelos.
tem gente que escreve haicai,
três linhas à bashô.
baibais também seguem modelos.
quem escreve baibais sabe que acabou
-se o que era doce.
§
espancada na infância molha os pés no rio orinoco
debaixo d'água como soa a ocarina?
brbrlllbrrrr brbrlllbrrr
§
esnobada na festa molha os pés no rio da antas
debaixo d'água como faz seu coração?
'sai da chuva' 'já pra casa'
§
sufragette sem rouge molha os pés no rio clyde
debaixo d'água como faz o seu cabelo?
esquerda.... direita.... esquerda.... direita....
§
feia nas fotografias molha os pés no rio reno
debaixo d'água como faz seu celular?
'depois do bipe lorelei depois do bipe'
Angélica Freitas lives and works in Pelotas.
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