drawing by Francisco Fariawhere sky meets earth -
translated by Chris Danielsby night pitch devoursits own scent;dragging over ochre soil,dark darkensnight so nightit doubles into daymud puddles huminsects once again;will come the miryditches i wallow— with the sun —purple dust,long rolls windexalts and windsvertical sun self-outshinesand evening evensin a twilighthollow of the shadow,dusk of dense fog(fruit rotin the tun)———
onde o céuencontra a terrao breu devore noiteo próprio rasto;no solo ocre, de rojo,o escuro escureça,noite tão noiteque se dobre em diaos charcos zoemoutra vez insetos;virem os regosde lodoem que chafurdo— com o sol —pó púrpuro,ou longos rolosque o ventoeleva e enovelaa prumo o sol ofusquea si mesmo,e a tarde entardeçanum crepúsculobojo de sombras,lusco-fusco de névoas(frutos apodrecendona gamela )____
Josely Vianna Baptista (Curitiba, Paraná, Brasil, 1957) has written several books of poetry and prose, including a book for young adults which received the VI Prémio Internacional del Libro Ilustrado Infantil y Juvenil del Gobierno de México. She has translated more than fifty books, including poems by J.L. Borges for the multi-volume
Obra Completa (Globo), for which she was awarded the prestigious Prêmio Jabuti in 1999.
On the shining screen of the eyelids (Manifest Press), a collection of her poems and
Florid Pores, a poem in six cantos (
1913: a journal of forms), have been published in the United States.The perfervidly anti-capitalist, godless, internationalist son of well-known language-artist maestro David Daniels,
Chris Daniels was born in NYC in 1956. He dropped out of high school to become a dishwasher and never bothered with college. He worked as a cook and played electric bass guitar for many years. In 1980, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he still lives and sells his labor at a terrible loss. For reasons still unclear to him, he passed the GED and received a high school diploma in 1996. He’s working on a huge, fascicular anthology of Lusophone poetry, which he publishes and distributes to friends in very small, cheaply produced editions.
Francisco Faria (Curitiba, Paraná, Brasil, 1956) was educated as an architect, but early on abandoned that profession and turned to fine art. He has shown his drawings in exhibitions in Brasil, Japan, Europe and the US. He is also a book designer, typographer and graphic designer. Many of his complex drawings, some of which are accompanied by poems by Luis Dolhnikoff and/or Josely Vianna Baptista, can be found
here. An original-size version of the above picture can be found
here.
