this is not a travel book because travel is not a book of travelbecause a book is travel at best i aver it’s a baedeker of epiphaniesat worst i can swear it’s an epiphany in a baedeker for golden domes ofan orthodox russo-byzantine church set deep in geneva going downhillon route de malagnou heading to the city center through a glimpsedvision of the oldtown and canals one could get married whynot next to the chineselions that some fatherfriar wayfarer returning from a journey apilgrimage to oriental missions learned to sculpt at the entrance of the esplanadeof convento de são francisco northern paraíba at the cobblestoned entranceoverflowing eight mouths of portalgates in contained and then scatteredsteps drying racks of stone and joão pessoa in the summer rain was notan island by gauguin bronzing away in the distance paradisiacal peace in an iamb of silksand hair blowing in the wind plumed quill in the sultry summer and seated in a caféin genève miss stromboli entreteneuse entertainer dead in her apartmentnobody knowing how miss stromboli nom de guerre due to hermyriademented temperament a volcano in the swiss frost and a homelesspup a furry pom-pom pooch dripping wet from rain that dayin genève making the genf newspaper headlines miss stromboli eruptinglike a geyser of red hair a sure case of strangulation and thepoor petite stabbed prostitute from paraíba with perfectly primped darkpubis without nom de guerre bleeding unto death reeking of urine nohomeless pooch no fancy pure-bred champagne cocker spaniel orfancy pedigree gray poodle whimpering in the rain for the golden domeof the orthodox church of genève shone golden orbs against the sun and thebaroque church of joão pessoa frozen in its lake of stone slabs flankedby chinese dragons in the rainsun of summer nothing new in the world under therainsun the similar resembling the dissimilar a baedeker of visagesyou know you’ll accept a palette die weitaus beliebteste farbige filter-zigarette exquisite taste le goût exquis des meilleurs tabacs ses couleursattrayantes et l’élégance de sa présentation piacciono a tutti in tuttoil mondo signorina stromboli or the petite prostitute from paraíba madethe front page in genève like blood gushing from the gashthroat slashed in a cubicle reeking of urine and the latter is the former or the former isthe latter while the wind swells when a swan dies in the zürichsee it’s news in the zurichpapers because nothing ever happens the yeardays of the days of week-years but fräulein stromboli as if amid fatbald businessmen offamilylife and garçonnière apartment his rented blonde like a check-stub the big-business bosses the industry bosses the businessbigwigs a volcano was she while the waiter garçon chats with the patronneabout the news of the day and someone writes letters in a café in geneva drinkinggeneva gin recounting other deaths computing other fates while thepolice die polizei investigates les flics investigate smoking tips of palette cigarettebutts l’art suprême supreme artistry of the attractive presentation mlle.stromboli in the deluxe shoeboxapartment for the nightly pleasures of the ruddy-fatsos fathersofthenation doll strangled not knowing unable to know who wouldknow her death her fate her state a minuscule volcano of a tale told
[this is not a travel book because travel is not a book of travel]
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- January 30, 2025
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Translation © Odile Cisneros, from galáxias (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024).

Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003) played a pivotal role not only in Brazilian and Latin American culture, but also in the avant-garde at large. Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Campos was barely in his twenties when he founded the concrete poetry movement alongside his brother Augusto de Campos and their friend Décio Pignatari, thus revolutionizing poetry and placing Brazil on the map of literary experimentalism for the first time. Over the years, his writing evolved in different directions, including the experimental prose of galáxias. Parallel to his creative efforts, Campos republished long-forgotten poets, such as the Romantic Joaquim de Sousândrade and the modernist Oswald de Andrade. With Augusto and Décio, he translated modernist and world literature including Joyce, Mayakovski, Pound, medieval troubadours, Dante, Chinese classical poetry, Japanese Noh plays, Goethe, Mallarmé, Biblical texts, and Homer, among others. Campos produced a complex oeuvre of extreme global and temporal breadth gathered in more than 30 single-authored and collaborative volumes.

Odile Cisneros has translated the work of modern and contemporary poets, including Régis Bonvicino, Haroldo de Campos, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Sérgio Medeiros, Vítězslav Nezval, and Jaroslav Seifert. Her translation of Haroldo de Campos’s galáxias was published in 2024 by Ugly Duckling Presse. She teaches at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Begun in 1963 and only published in its final form in 1984, galáxias is a sui generis work. As Haroldo de Campos himself wrote: “An audiovideotext, a videotextgame, the galáxias situate themselves on the border between prose and poetry. In this kaleidoscopic book, there’s an epic, narrative gesture—mini-stories that come together and dissolve like the ‘suspense’ of a detective novel … but the image remains, the vision or calling of the epiphanic.” A series of 50 “galactic cantos”—in homage to both Dante and Pound—de Campos likewise follows James Joyce’s cue in conceiving of galáxias as a “defense and illustration” of the Portuguese language and its poetic possibilities. The text incorporates literary allusion, citation, and words and phrases in at least a dozen languages, making galáxias a formidable experiment in polyglot poetry. galáxias charts the literal and literary journeys de Campos undertook from the early 1950s on. Arguably his chief poetic accomplishment, galáxias is also a landmark in world avant-garde poetics.
Translated by Odile Cisneros, Suzanne Jill Levine, Charles Perrone, Christopher Middleton, Norman Maurice Potter.
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