What's in a Name [Paperback]

How solid is a name if answered to, Amaral answers, but like the Roseno, like its perfume: ungovernable. Free. There is much freedom within Amarals poetry, room for mysteries to multiply, and yet her beautiful lines are as clear as water: With the original Portuguese to the left and the translated English to the right, this collection of poems beautifully weaves together myths, histories, voyages, and language with elegant ease. Amaral wears her attentiveness on her sleeve, deftly considering her place at home, in her city, and in the wilds. Amaral carves a space for fragmentation, uncertainty, and meditative silence within the repertoire of inherited forms. In this accomplished volume and translation, Amarals subtle experimentation makes strange an artistic repertoire we thought we knew. Ana Luisa Amaral's poems read as intimate conversations between the poet and reader, in either the early hours of morning or the late hours of night, where small, everyday moments quickly spiral into great cultural, historical, and even cosmic significance. Brilliant. This bilingual volume, pairing Costas translations with Amarals Portuguese originals, relies on humble imagery and plain language to plumb complicated truths. Inspired: while Costa is particularly adept at bringing into English these moments sought by Amaral of beauty and significance amid the superficiallyprosaic, she is equally at home with re-creating the texture and density ofAmarals restrained and aphoristic Portuguese, saturating each word and truncated line with meaning. Amarals poetry possesses an intimacy that grantsit a sense of timelessness. Yet it speaks to the moment we find ourselves intoday. In a limpid, poised poetry Ana Lu?sa Amaral evokes interlinked substances (a book, a mood, a mosquito, color itself, love and trust as central, being a mother, domestic moments and their metamorphic transformations) and affirms Being in the world with both a bedazzled clarity and a notable patience wlU