Saudade

Traci Brimhall

“Saudade” is a Portuguese word referring to a quality of longing that has no direct translation into English. Inspired by stories from her Brazilian-born mother, Traci Brimhall’s third collection—a lush and startling “autobiomythography”—is reminiscent of the rich imaginative worlds of Latin American magical realists. Set in the Brazilian Amazon, Saudade is one part ghost story, one part revival, populated by a colorful cast of characters and a recurring chorus of irreverent Marias.

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ISBN: 9781556595172

Format: Paperback

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Saudade

Each time I start, the explorers and tyrants,
encantados and daughters are already dead. If you want
to know what I long for, I’d say a world of my own

making where changing destinies is a phrase away,
where everything is true but retreats when you try
and touch it. Where saintless miracles frequent

because the awe is boundless and the drink specials
are cheap. Where I am capable of a quieter greatness
and can write the story I wish someone had written

for me. If only the past would have me now that I have
its answers—its griefs and inheritances. I’ve given
at least half of my faith to madness, the rest

to the chapters written for those who were made
for more loneliness. Not this present with its
half-hearted daydreams and migrating graves.

You can grieve something you’ve never seen.
The past seems more sure, more endless. Time
moves, but I won’t. I will wait for the what-was

to return, the way it did once, that morning
I found a naked girl in my field, her body sure
as prose. When I reached, her flesh vanished,

her bones lay white as paper. My hand, all urge
and no sentiment, bled into her ribs, joyful,
beholding, waiting for the word to begin.

About the Author

Known for her frequent marriage of the ordinary with the surreal, Traci Brimhall is the author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (2020); Saudade (2017); Our Lady of the Ruins (2012), selected by Carolyn Forché for the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (2010), selected by Michelle Boisseau for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, and she …

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Reviews

“Gorgeous and searing, Brimhall’s poems are rooted in the marriage of myth, mysticism, and mystery. Collected with the breadth and power of a novel, but delivered in discrete scenes and dreams, Saudade is one of the best books I’ve read this year.” —Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions

[A] spellbinding collection of narrative verse from Brimhall about miracles, curses, and the stories people tell to come to terms with their experiences.” —Publishers Weekly

“[Brimhall] allows us brief visions, glimpses, of experiences more lush and raw than our own, but then retracts them, and it is this retraction that makes the poems sting and sing.” —Nick Lantz, The Rumpus

“The poems in Traci Brimhall’s Rookery make beautiful the brutal as she casts an uncompromising eye on the vagaries of faith, the disappointments of the human heart—and the uneasy interstices between animal consciousness and ours… Part incantation, part lamentation, the language in these poems is sensual and urgent.” —Claudia Emerson

“With a stunning mastery of metaphor, linguistic precision, and a soulful determined vision, Brimhall’s work reveals an artist tuned to the significance of everyday experience…” —Dorianne Laux