Paulo Leminski: The Legacy of Brazil’s Pop Poet Lives On After 35 Years – BBC News Brasil
Paulo Leminski, the pop poet that Brazil lost 35 years ago
Even those who do not enjoy poetry must have come across this simple, direct, and poignant poem: “não discuto/ com o destino// o que pintar/ eu assino” (I do not argue/ with destiny// whatever it paints/ I sign). A poem without punctuation, without any capital letters, without difficult words to understand. Yet full of meanings.
It was this type of construction that made the Curitiba-born Paulo Leminski (1944-1989) a pop poet. With his unique style and striking language, he appropriated popular sayings and the minimalist sophistication of Japanese haikus, used and abused slang and swear words, incorporated advertising clichés into poetry, and wrote phrases that could very well be graffiti on walls — many of which later were.
This Friday (7/6) marks 35 years since his death, due to complications from hepatic cirrhosis. His problems with alcohol were constant — he used to say he had a “litroteca,” due to the habit of hiding vodka bottles behind the books in his library. He died young, at the age of 44, but left behind a body of work that influenced and still influences contemporary Brazilian poets and writers.
Born 80 years ago to Polish immigrants who moved to Brazil, Leminski left his family in Paraná at the age of 14 and decided to live for a year at the Mosteiro de São Bento in São Paulo. There, amidst the vast and erudite library maintained by the traditional religious, he learned philosophy, classical literature, and the fundamentals of Latin and theology.
Back in Curitiba, he set aside the ideas of becoming a monk. Instead, he became a writer, poet, musician, literary critic, journalist, advertiser, translator, and teacher. He even studied Law and Literature — but did not complete his degrees. Throughout his career, he made a living as a history and writing teacher in pre-university courses. From the 1970s onwards, he also worked in advertising agencies.
His debut in the literary world was in 1964 when he published five poems in the magazine Invenção, led by the concrete poet Décio Pignatari (1927-2012).
His most important books include ‘Polonaises’ (1980), ‘Caprichos e Relaxos’ (1983), ‘Distraídos Venceremos’ (1987), and the experimental prose ‘Catatau,’ first published in 1975.
One of the main characteristics of Leminski’s success was his understanding of the language of his time, say experts.
“Leminski broke with codes, paradigms, concepts, was completely free from schools or trends. That’s why he transcends several generations and captivates the most diverse tastes in poetry,” defines the poet and translator Flora Figueiredo to BBC News Brasil.
The poet and translator André Capilé, a professor of Brazilian Literature at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), tells BBC News Brasil that “Leminski has always been a poet attentive to his own time” and knew how to have “intense dialogues with aspects of culture, also responding to counterculture.”
“This type of quick and direct communication with the events of his period, considering his poetic trajectory, places him almost as an extemporaneous figure, which turns him into a contemporary poet all the time,” he concludes.
“It is impossible to do anything good without enthusiasm. And this Paulo Leminski had in abundance, as well as ample doses of excess and intellectual and creative vigor,” evaluates Fabrício Marques, a journalist, poet, and university professor, author of ‘Aço em flor: a poesia de Paulo Leminski.’
For him, Leminski was “a defender of the connection between poetry and life to the maximum degree.” “Someone with a sense of urgency,” he says. The poet Alice Ruiz, Leminski’s former partner, once said that he had “an urgency to live as one who is dying.”
“With him, there was no middle ground: he was a poet 24 hours a day, without breaks. Poetry was his treasure, one of the sources of his pleasure. For her and for her,” Marques adds.
“This amalgamation between life and work, this unrestricted passion for language may explain a bit the popularization of this poetry and the emphasis on its more pop side,” he analyzes. “In addition, his persona and his interventions in the public arena, in various genres and spaces, were very seductive, creating a strong bond with readers.”
The success continues to be important for the publishing market. ‘Toda Poesia,’ a collection of all Leminski’s poetry books, sold 170 thousand copies in 2013 — a very interesting figure for the niche.
A fellow Curitiba native, also a university professor, poet, and translator Ivan Justen tells BBC News Brasil that becoming a pop poet was the author of ‘Caprichos e Relaxos’ intention. “After having done what he called ‘military service’ with the concrete poets and publishing ‘Catatau,’ a book that goes beyond the limits of intelligibility, Leminski wanted to be read and admired by the masses,” he contextualizes.
The poet publicly declared his admiration for popular authors like Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, and Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980).
For Justen, Leminski’s strength lay in “the short poems, never exceeding one page,” and these “fit perfectly into the virtual universe.” Yes, long before the internet, Leminski was already writing texts that worked very well in the era of social media and instant communication.
“Leminski’s poetry is popular because it is apparently easy to understand for those who do not seek the references and intertextualities that are there. Therefore, it is the type that pleases both the public and critics,” he emphasizes.
The Rector of the State University of Ponta Grossa (UEPG), writer, and professor Miguel Sanches Neto highlights to BBC News Brasil that Leminski’s poetry “became extremely popular due to the conjunction of several factors.” “First, his relationship with MPB [he composed song lyrics and was close to artists, including the Novos Baianos group — which is why the poet joked that he had become ‘curitibaiano’], which made him a contemporary, national, and internationalized pop expression within Tropicalism,” he recalls.
“In parallel to this, Leminski worked on a double frequency, on one side easy, extremely accessible poetry, which we could call t-shirt poetry. On the other, an experimental one coming from the concretists,” analyzes Sanches Neto. “He managed to be a kind of confluence point of all Brazilian culture in the 1970s and 1980s, giving him a projection that no other poet of his generation had.”
According to the academic, Leminski was the “last big public success of Brazilian poetry.”
“I think one of the reasons Leminski’s poetry reaches such diverse audiences is the rare quality of his writing,” defines the educator Francione Oliveira Carvalho, a professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) and the University of São Paulo (USP). “Those who like and value poetry perceive the richness in the use of word sound and poetic language; those who are not so familiar with the genre are enchanted by the direct communication and intelligence in the use of words and images created. He is a poet who communicates with very diverse sensitivities.”
There are other aspects as well. Firstly, as Sanches Neto rightly points out, Leminski had a “life of a pop star.” “He was a guy who committed all excesses and died young,” says Sanches Neto. In this sense, he became part of a pantheon that combines international rock stars and poets like the romantic Álvares de Azevedo (1831-1852) and the filmmaker Glauber Rocha (1939-1981).
Another point was his connection to the world and the language of advertising. “He was the first poet to shamelessly use advertising to self-promote. He was a poet and a poetry driven by the advertising promotion he himself created,” says the rector.
Among the examples is the book launch campaign for ‘Catatau,’ where the poet shared a photo of himself completely naked. And also the adoption of the thick mustaches as a trademark, in reference to the international projection of the then Polish union leader Lech Walesa — later, the President of Poland.
“This [use] is not pejorative. But he was the first poet who used advertising to promote his profession. This does not diminish his production but enlarges the name of the writer,” says Sanches Neto.
“Leminski’s poetry became pop because the world was becoming increasingly pop. He wrote in short verses, in the manner of haikus. He came from erudite records but they were increasingly pressured by the pop world, rock, etc.,” contextualizes the poet, translator, and literary critic Régis Bonvicino to BBC News Brasil.
A professor at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), poet Marcelo Sandmann points out, in conversation with BBC News Brasil, the popular approach of Leminski after the publication of ‘Catatau,’ “a work that was a kind of settling of accounts with literary avant-gardes, with which he flirted in the previous decade.”
“From then on, Leminski increasingly approached so-called marginal poetry and popular songs, without neglecting the influence he received from concretism. It is a colloquial, concise poetry, full of humorous quips and verbal play, sometimes quite digestible,” he explains.
“In the early 1980s, he began to collaborate with the major Brazilian press and to publish translations, biographies, and original works by Brasiliense, a publisher that was then widely distributed in the country. Using his talents as an advertiser, he also knew how to create a personal image of great appeal, beyond the literature he produced,” synthesizes Sandmann.
Influences:
The impact of Leminski’s production remains evident in the contemporary Brazilian literary scene. “For better or for worse [he] has become a reference for poets who came after,” says Marques. “For the better, […] he gave the freedom not to define a path, but to invent countless ways for the creative exercise of the word. For the worse, the poet himself recognized that he had a vigorous, multiple, and irregular work. […] In this line, his short poems gave the impression that making a poem is ‘easy,’ generating a legion of epigones.”
Justen says that Leminski’s influence is “remarkable” because “he is an unavoidable figure in Brazilian poetry.” “I think he influences even in the sense that contemporary poets seek to avoid imitating him, while others assume that by seeking what he sought they will find a beautiful path.”
For Carvalho, however, although Leminski is “an inspiration for contemporary poets,” it is worth noting that “it is very difficult to repeat what he did because the apparent and false simplicity of his poems is coated with a lot of research and culture.”
The poet Figueiredo admits to being “an example of this influence” herself. “I perceive in my 37 years of literary career how the conciseness and audacity of the poet are present in my works. There is also a strong melodic trait, the result of a sound inherent to Leminski,” she observes.
“[He] influences contemporary poets because his poems, his formulas, have been successful, attracting young poets. His poetry ends up being a facilitator,” argues Bonvicino.
As Paulo Leminski wrote, also without any capital letters and without a period: “tudo dito,/ nada feito, fito e deito” (everything said,/ nothing done, I look and lie down).