“EXPORT POETRY”: THE GEOGRAPHIC AND ETNOGRAPHIC TRIP IN BRAZILIAN POETRY

Abstract

The ethnographic and geographical voyage in the Western tradition is described as a source of poetry, formalized through mythology, performance, travel narratives, and unexpected encounters with peoples and cultures. In Brazilian literature, poetry has been found in the “Carta” of Pero Vaz de Caminha extending to Haroldo de Campos’ Finismundo, the last voyage of Ulysses. Why and for what purposes does the Brazilian poet travel? Here we examine cases of ethnographic and geographical poetry. Oswald de Andrade clips poems from the “Carta” and colonial chronicles. In 1924 Blaise Cendrars, who provides a prototype of travel poetry for modernism, arrives in São Paulo to practice travel poetry that extends through Oswald de Andrade’s Pau Brasil. In the Mediterranean, Murilo Mendes, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Ana Cristina César, and Haroldo de Campos interpret physical geography poetically. The São Paulo concrete poets act through an international web of materials, structure, and reception. Contemporary poets such as Angélica Freitas exemplify the deglutition of virtual global voyages in a hybrid Brazilian poetics. Through ethnographic travel, poetry discovers both its origins and its wider meanings.