The Daily Glance
Richard Price's Cartas de ontem: poemas is the Brazilian Portuguese translation of a selection of Lucky Days made by the brilliant Brazilian poet Virna Teixeira. Not having a copy of Lucky Days, I read through this bilingual book to get a sense of Price's poetry. Most of the poems are love poems, and Virna introduces them well by pointing to the tension in them and how this creates a disorder in language. Price's poems are tightly put together, not wasting a word on anything unnecessary. Price notes that one poem is after Catullus, and really the poems feel like older love poems simplified--stripped down and in that made contemporary. The last section of the book deals with poems about birds. While interesting, it's not as gripping as the first section which contains many concise but interesting pieces like this one.
Think for thinking
When can we be . . .
gentle again?
An eye-headache, car-noise.
We're wearing our foreheads
offering. . . short tempers.
We're lessening
but the money and the space
and the money and the space
keep
on
promising.
Richard Price's Cartas de ontem: poemas is the Brazilian Portuguese translation of a selection of Lucky Days made by the brilliant Brazilian poet Virna Teixeira. Not having a copy of Lucky Days, I read through this bilingual book to get a sense of Price's poetry. Most of the poems are love poems, and Virna introduces them well by pointing to the tension in them and how this creates a disorder in language. Price's poems are tightly put together, not wasting a word on anything unnecessary. Price notes that one poem is after Catullus, and really the poems feel like older love poems simplified--stripped down and in that made contemporary. The last section of the book deals with poems about birds. While interesting, it's not as gripping as the first section which contains many concise but interesting pieces like this one.
Think for thinking
When can we be . . .
gentle again?
An eye-headache, car-noise.
We're wearing our foreheads
offering. . . short tempers.
We're lessening
but the money and the space
and the money and the space
keep
on
promising.
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