Paulo Leminski certainly occupies a privileged space in Brazilian literature. Few writers achieved as much popularity as the man from Curitiba, who even today continues to attract admirers across the country. Paulo's work is perpetuated for its aesthetic quality and representativeness. Exhaustedly reproduced on social networks, a fact that proves that his poetry was not restricted to the academy, it won readers and fans, causing a recently published anthology of the author to displace bestsellers in the number of bandages.
Paulo Leminski's work combines elements such as conciseness, irreverence, colloquiality and the rigor of formal construction. He was one of the main representatives of Marginal Poetry, also known as the Mimeograph Generation, a trend that brought together writers who used the visual resources of advertising, subverted the literary canon and distributed their books independently, without relying on the support of the great publishers. Leminski inherited part of the concretist aesthetic, a movement that emerged in Brazil in the 1950s, being considered one of its main names, alongside writers such as Décio Pignatari and Augusto de Fields.
see more
Itaú Social 2022 will distribute 2 million physical and…
NGO Pró-Saber SP offers free course to educators
Poet, novelist and translator, Paulo Leminski was born on August 24, 1944, in Curitiba, capital of Paraná. As a young man he had contact with Latin, theology, philosophy and classical literature, and at the age of 12 he entered the Monastery of São Bento, in São Paulo. In 1963 he abandoned his religious vocation and in 1963 he published five poems in the magazine Invenção (responsible for publishing the work of concretist poets). He taught History and Writing in pre-college courses and later became creative director and copywriter at advertising agencies, a fact that influenced his poetic production. The first novel, Catatau, was released in 1975, a book that the author himself would call “experimental prose”.
An admirer of Japanese culture, Leminski was a translator and follower of Matsuo Bashô, one of the most famous poets of the Edo period in Japan. Bashô is considered a master of the haikai, a type of short poem formed by three verses, in which the first and third verses are pentasyllables, that is, formed by five poetic syllables, and the second verse is heptasyllables, formed by seven syllables. The interest in oriental metrics made Leminski recognized as the main promoter of haiku poetry in Brazil.
The writer also contributed significantly to Brazilian Popular Music. He partnered with renowned names such as Caetano Veloso, Moraes Moreira, Arnaldo Antunes and Itamar Assumpção. His contribution as a literary critic and translator is also significant: among the main authors he has translated are James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Yukio Mishima, Alfred Jarry, among others. He died early, on June 7, 1989, at the age of forty-four, a victim of liver cirrhosis.
So that you can see for yourself the genius and creativity of one of the most popular and beloved writers in our literature, the Escola Educação website has selected fifteen poems by Paulo Leminski that will certainly be an invitation for you to unveil your constructions. Good reading!
See the 14 Best Poems by Paulo Leminski:
Poem: Deep down – Paulo Leminski
deep down
In the background, in the background,
deep inside,
we would like
to see our problems
resolved by decree
From this date,
that heartache without remedy
is considered null
and about her — perpetual silence
extinguished by law all remorse,
cursed be those who look back,
there is nothing behind
and nothing else
but problems are not solved,
problems have big family,
and on sundays
everyone goes for a walk
the problem, ma'am
and other little problems.
Poem: Elegant Pain – Paulo Leminski
elegant pain
A man in pain
It's much more elegant
walk sideways like this
As if arriving late
get further
Carry the weight of pain
As if wearing medals
One crown, one million dollars
Or something worth it
Opiums, Edens, Painkillers
Don't touch me in this pain
She is all I have left
Suffering will be my last job
Poem: Invernaculo – Paulo Leminski
winternacle
This language is not mine,
anyone notices.
Who knows I curse lies,
you will see that I only lie truths.
That's how I tell myself, I, minimal,
who knows, I feel, barely knows.
This is not my language.
The language I speak hangs
a distant song
the voice, beyond, not a word.
The dialect used
to the left margin of the sentence,
here is the speech that luses me,
I, half, I in, I, almost.
Poem: What does it mean – Paulo Leminski
What you mean
What does it mean says.
don't keep doing
which, one day, I always did.
Not just wanting, wanting,
thing I never wanted.
What do you mean, say.
Just saying to another
what, one day, was said,
one day you will be happy.
Poem: M. of memory – Paulo Leminski
M. from memory
Books know by heart
thousands of poems.
What a memory!
Remembering, like this, it's worth it.
It's worth the waste
Ulysses returned from Troy,
just as Dante said,
the sky is not worth a story.
one day the devil came
seduce a doctor Fausto.
Byron was true.
Fernando, person, was fake.
Mallarmé was so pale,
it looked more like a page.
Rimbaud left for Africa,
Hemingway of Mirages.
Books know everything.
You already know about this dilemma.
They just don't know that, deep down,
read is nothing more than a legend.
Poem: Warning to the Castaways – Paulo Leminski
Warning to castaways
This page, for example,
it was not born to be read.
Born to be pale,
a mere plagiarism of the Iliad,
something that shuts up
leaf that returns to the branch,
long after the fall.
Born to be beach,
who knows Andromeda, Antarctica
Himalayas, felt syllable,
born to be last
the one that hasn't been born yet.
Words brought from afar
by the waters of the Nile,
one day, this page, papyrus,
will have to be translated,
for the symbol, for the Sanskrit,
for all dialects of India,
you will have to say good morning
what is only said in the ear,
it will have to be the sudden stone
where someone dropped the glass.
Isn't that what life is like?
Poem: Loving you is a thing of minutes... - Paulo Leminski
Loving you is a thing of minutes...
Loving you is a matter of minutes
Death is less than your kiss
So good to be yours that I am
I at your feet spilled
Little remains of what I was
It depends on you to be good or bad
I will be what you think is convenient
I will be more than a dog for you
A shadow that warms you
A God Who Doesn't Forget
A Servant Who Doesn't Say No
When your father dies, I will be your brother
I will say the verses you want
I will forget all women
I will be so much and everything and everyone
You will be disgusted that I am that
And I will be at your service
As long as my body lasts
As long as my veins run
The red river that ignites
When I see your face like a torch
I will be your king your bread your thing your rock
yes i will be here
Poem: Administration – Paulo Leminski
Administration
When the mystery arrives,
you will find me sleeping,
half giving for Saturday,
other half, Sunday.
There is no sound or silence,
when the mystery increases.
Silence is meaningless,
I never stop watching.
Mystery, something I think
more time, less place.
When the mystery returns,
my sleep is so loose,
there is no fear in the world
that can support me.
Midnight, open book.
moths and mosquitoes
land on the uncertain text.
It would be the white of the leaf,
light that looks like object?
Who knows the smell of black,
that falls there like a leftover?
Or would the insects
discovered kinship
with the letters of the alphabet?
Poem: Syntony for haste and omen – Paulo Leminski
Tuning for Haste and Omen
Write in space.
Today, graph in time,
on the skin, on the palm, on the petal,
light of the moment.
Soo in the doubt that separates
the silence of those who scream
of the silent scandal,
in time, distance, square,
that the break, wing, takes
to go from mishap to spasm.
Behold the voice, behold the god, behold the speech,
behold, the light went on in the house
and it no longer fits in the room.
Poem: Punctual Delay – Paulo Leminski
punctual delay
Yesterdays and todays, loves and hates,
is it worth checking the clock?
Nothing could have been done,
except the time when it was logical.
No one has ever been late.
blessings and misfortunes
always comes on time.
Everything else is plagiarism.
Is this meeting
between time and space
more than a dream i tell
or another poem that I make?
Poem: Disagreements – Paulo Leminski
mismatches
I sent the word to rhyme,
she didn't obey me.
He spoke of the sea, of the sky, of roses,
in Greek, in silence, in prose.
He seemed out of his mind,
the silent syllable.
I sent the phrase to dream,
and she went into a labyrinth.
Making poetry, I feel, is just that.
Give orders to an army,
to conquer a defunct empire.
Poem: Poetry: – Paulo Leminski
Poetry:
“words set to music” (Dante
via Pound), “a trip to
unknown” (Mayakovsky), “cores
and marrow” (Ezra Pound), “the speech of the
infallible” (Goethe), “language
turned to your own
materiality” (Jakobson),
“permanent hesitation between sound and
sense” (Paul Valery), “foundation of
being through the word” (Heidegger),
“the original religion of mankind”
(Novalis), “the best words in
better order” (Coleridge), “emotion
remembered in tranquility”
(Wordsworth), “science and passion”
(Alfred de Vigny), “it is done with
words, not with ideas” (Mallarmé),
“Music made with ideas”
(Ricardo Reis/Fernando Pessoa), “a
pretending indeed” (Fernando
Pessoa), “criticism of life” (Mathew
Arnold), “word-thing” (Sartre),
“Language in a state of purity
wild” (Octavio Paz), “poetry is to
inspire” (Bob Dylan), “design
language” (Décio Pignatari), “lo
impossible hecho possible” (Garcia
Lorca), “what is lost in the
translation (Robert Frost), “freedom
of my language” (Paulo Leminski)…
Poem: The moon in the cinema – Paulo Leminski
the moon in the movies
The moon went to the movies,
there was a funny movie,
the story of a star
who didn't have a boyfriend.
I didn't because it was just
a very small star,
of those that, when they go out,
no one will say, what a shame!
It was a single star,
no one looked at her
and all the light she had
it fit in a window.
The moon was so sad
with that love story
that even today the moon insists:
"Dawn, please!"
Poem: I wanted so much - Paulo Leminski
I wanted so much
I wanted so much
be a damn poet
the mass suffering
while I meditate deeply
I wanted so much
be a social poet
burnt face
by the breath of the crowds
instead
look at me here
putting salt
in this thin soup
which is barely enough for two.
Luana Alves
Graduated in Letters