Mediterranean

"I love the deep attentiveness to the world in these poems. But even more so: I love how this attentiveness is handed to us with language that is graceful rather than heavy or full of pronouncements; there is play and there is much reality, and all of it is filled with metaphysics but not weighted down by it. It is like classical music, in this effect. And, I love that. I know I will be looking to read new translations of these writings anywhere I can find them. Truly."

ILYA KAMINSKY, author of Deaf Republic

"What takes a Mediterranean poet on a meditative journey across the Mediterranean, from Bridal Veil in Porto Moniz, to the Wall of Solomon, to ruins of a Roman palace in Split, to a flower market in Provence...? It reminds us of a familiar expression: "If you lose your way, go back to where you started!" This is exactly what I think makes João Luís Barreto Guimarães's adventure unique: he reflects the modern consciousness onto the face of our history of civilization "where time itself is holding its breath." The poetry in Mediterranean reflects about what we have lost and are losing every day, mastering questions and revelations that, articulated in the right place and the right moment, with such a poetic finesse as here, stays with us much longer after the Mediterranean scent is gone."

LULJETA LLESHANAKU, author of Negative Space

"This is, above all, the aestheticization of everyday, colloquial language, and its hybridization with references to high culture, a fine and well-balanced irony, with a subtle humorous edge. The lightness and warmth of a lyrical smile that sometimes spills over into the laughter of lovers and, on other occasions, into that of an observer of a banal street event, but which never turns into a noisy and strident laugh. (...) Guimarães' work is also one of the proofs that Portuguese poetry is still alive and vital, and that it is not reduced to the beautiful hundred-headed hydra, now iconic, that is Pessoa."

MARKO POGAČAR, author of Dear Letter Office