Cattle of the lord
Subtitle: poems
By: Rosa Alice Branco ; translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin
Contributors: Levitin, Alexis, translator
Edition: First edition.
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 84
ISBN-13: 9781571314826
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: Portuguese poetry
Work titles: Poems
Description: "Winner of the Espiral Poetry Prize for Best Collection in Brazil, Portugal, Angola, and Galicia Love. Sex. Death. Meat. Traffic. Pets. In Cattle of the Lord, Rosa Alice Branco offers a stunning poetic vision at once sacred and profane, a rich evocation of daily life troubled by uneasy sacramentality. In a collection translated by Alexis Levitin and presented in both Portuguese and English, readers find themselves in a world turned upside down: darkly comic, sensual, and rife with contradiction. Here, liturgical words become lovers' invitations. Cows moo at the heavens. And chickens are lessons on the resurrection. Over the course of the collection, Branco's unorthodox-even blasphemous-religious sensibility yields something ultimately hopeful: a belief that the physical, the quotidian, and the animalistic are holy, too. Flesh, in all its meanings-the body of the other, caressed; the animals we abuse, and eat; the sacrificial offering of Christ-demands reverence. Writing at the boundaries of sense and mystification, combining sensuous lyrics and wit with theological interrogation, Branco breaks down what we think we know about religion, faith, and what it means to be human. "Lord, how much compassion will it take for you," her speaker cries, "To be godfather at the Sunday barbecue?""--
Notes: "First published in Portuguese as O Gado do Senhor"--Title-page verso.

Bilingual poetry.

Poems in Portuguese and English.