Social poetry. Characteristics of social poetry

It is presented as an unquestionable truth to state that the so-called “period styles”, “schools literary”, in short, establish a constant dialogue with each other, sometimes complementing each other, sometimes opposing. In that regard, the social poetry emerged as a kind of demonstration, whose main aim was to position itself against the radicalism manifested by the concrete movement. The latter, in turn, so worshiped this aspect that he conceived the poem as the object-word, centered on itself, whose expression is not manifested by the speech itself, but rather by the visual aspect, geometric.

In view of this issue, it is impossible to conceive of such manifestations as subjective, since it is something closed, free from multiple possibilities of interpretation. After that, social poetry appeared to contradict everything that was seen through concrete art.

Social poetry was very well represented by Thiago de Mello, Ferreira Gullar and Afonso Romano de Sant’Ana. They, through their artistic skills, re-established lyricism and made the word a instrument of social denunciation, of revealing the ills that plagued society at the time when lived.


Thus, actively participating in these issues, they chose to use a simple language, which was close to everyday life, as well demonstrated by master Ferreira Gullar, in one of his creations:
August 1964

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Between flower and shoe shops, bars,
markets, boutiques,
I travel by bus Railroad - Leblon.
I travel from work, in the middle of the night,
tired of lies.

The bus bounces. Goodbye, Rimbaud,
lilac watches, concretism,
neoconcretism, youth fictions, goodbye,
that life
I buy it in cash from the owners of the world.
Under the weight of taxes, the back suffocates,
poetry now responds inquiry
military police.

I say goodbye to illusion
But not to the world. But not to life,
my stronghold and my kingdom.
From the unfair salary,
of unjust punishment,
the humiliation, the torture,
of terror,
we take something out and build with it
an artifact, a poem,
a flag.

We infer that, through the expression Goodbye, Rimbaud, the poet denounces what the modernists preached so much: the desire for an authentically nationalist literature, as a form of detachment from imports.

From the unfair salary,
of unjust punishment,
the humiliation, the torture,
of terror,
we take something out and build with it
an artifact, a poem,
a flag.

Such verses denounce the indignation promulgated before: the denunciation that is made of social reality, manifested by social inequalities. As in another of his poems, the intention is no different from this one:

the price of beans
it doesn't fit in the poem. the price of rice
it doesn't fit in the poem.

Gas doesn't fit in the poem
the light the phone
the evasion
of milk
of the meat
of sugar
of the bread

[...]


By Vânia Duarte
Graduated in Letters

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