Work by Hélio Oiticica that defines in a few words the movement known as marginal poetry
The phrase by Hélio Oiticica — performance artist, painter and sculptor — defines the period well. known as the Marginal Movement, which would influence cultural production in Brazil in the years seventy. The Mimeographer Generation, or Marginal Poetry, had important names that disseminated the new artistic conception in Brazilian literature (innovation also found in the Concretism), the result of the first literary ruptures presented by modernist writers from the second decade of the 20th century.
Mimeograph poetry became known by this name because many poets resorted to the mimeograph (machine to make copies, with an original written or drawn in relief) to reproduce their texts and books. The almost artisanal method was an alternative process of creation, production and distribution of the poem, which replaced the traditional means of circulation of the works, such as publishers and bookstores. Sold hand in hand, the books were sold at low cost to a restricted public who attended events related to marginal culture, thus known for being outside the literary canons and on the fringes of criticism literary.
In literature and poetry, marginalia was represented by names such as Paulo Leminski, José Agripino de Paula, Waly Salomão, Francisco Alvim, Torquato Neto and Chacal. In the musical field, since marginalia was a movement that influenced the various arts, the main names of this period were Sérgio Sampaio, Tom Zé, Jorge Mautner, Jards Macalé and Luiz Melodia, who were later labeled by the press as “damned composers” of MPB, an ungrateful and unsympathetic epithet for those who could not find space in the major record labels of the era.
The nonconformity with the literary molds imposed by the academy and with the so-called “official Brazilian culture”, responsible for leaving out all production cultural that was outside the norm, was the driving force for this group of creative artists who subverted the sameness by proposing a constant innovation poetic. Marginal Poetry did not have a chapter of its own in the textbooks of Literature Brazilian, even because it was never considered a literary movement, but a movement of poetry, but still left a legacy for many poets and writers. We've selected three “marginal poems” for you to read with your eyes and immerse yourself in an interesting sensory experience. Good reading!
Love enough
when i saw you
I had a brilliant idea
it was like i looked
from within a diamond
and my eye won
a thousand faces in a single instant
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
just a moment
and you have enough love
a good poem
takes years
five playing ball,
five more studying Sanskrit,
six carrying stone,
nine dating the neighbor,
seven getting hit,
four walking alone,
three moving from city,
ten changing the subject,
an eternity, you and me,
walking together
Paulo Leminski
fast and low
there will be a party
that I'm going to dance
until the shoe asks to stop.
then I stop
take off my shoe
and I dance the rest of my life.
jackal
SUNYATA ROOM
Oh, tabula rasa.
Nothing times nothing, nines was nothing.
Null sun of the empty days. Null moon of the empty nights.
Behold, I reached the Nadir point.
If all things reduce us to
ZERO
is from there
ZERO
that we have to leave.
Waly Solomon
*The image that illustrates the article was made from album covers and books by the aforementioned artists.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PEREZ, Luana Castro Alves. "Marginal Poetry"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/poesia-marginal.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
