“Adélia Prado’s most recent collection of poems, once more in Ellen Doré Watson’s superbly energetic and natural English, is nothing like any poetry I know in our present moment. Her humor, her dancing solidity, her joy in being alive — I think back to Chaucer, and the poems of Grace Paley. Prado is similarly voluble, playful, down to earth, and cheerful; and she seems to have an uncannily easy-going, even merry relationship with God and all his family. She has given us a perfectly crystalline ex-voto.”—Jean Valentine. Ex-Voto is the second collection of Prado’s poetry translated by Ellen Doré Watson. Their previous collaborative volume, The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), was abundantly praised: “The life captured in Prado’s poems is convulsive: from a dark corner of despair she can rocket to pure joy in one line… This is poetry at its hottest and most naked…”—James Tate
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
"It’s the Soul That’s Erotic" Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky IX
The Pelican
Fibrillations 3
Lily-Like 4
The Mystical Rose 5
The Sphinx 7
The Transfer of the Body 8
God Does Not Reject the Work of His Hands ’9
Object of Affection 10
Responsory I
Eternal Life 12
Sleeping Beauty I3
Heraldry 14
The Birth of the Poem 15
Two o’Clock in the Afternoon in Brazil 16
The Dark of Night 18
Nigredo 19
The Good Shepherd 21
Divine Wrath 23
The Holy Face 24
The Battle 25
Ardent Memory 26
The Third Way 27
Sketchbook 29
Syllabication 30
Crazy Behavior 32
Furious with onathan 34
The Sacrifice 36
The Pelican 37
Silly Girl 38
Knife in the Chest 43
Biography of the Poet 45
The Meticulous One 47
Laetitia Cordis 48
History 49
Immolation 50
Opus Dei 51
In Portuguese 52
Parameter 53
Words and Names 54
The Tenacious Devil Who Doesn’t Exist 56
Matter 58
Form 59
Lighter Than Air 60
Guess 61
One More Time 62
Letter 63
Note from the Daring Damsel 65
One Thing After Another 66
Marvels 67
Irinity 60
The Last Supper 70
Pastoral 71
The Hermit’s Apprentice 72
"It’s the Soul That’s Erotic" Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky IX
The Pelican
Fibrillations 3
Lily-Like 4
The Mystical Rose 5
The Sphinx 7
The Transfer of the Body 8
God Does Not Reject the Work of His Hands ’9
Object of Affection 10
Responsory I
Eternal Life 12
Sleeping Beauty I3
Heraldry 14
The Birth of the Poem 15
Two o’Clock in the Afternoon in Brazil 16
The Dark of Night 18
Nigredo 19
The Good Shepherd 21
Divine Wrath 23
The Holy Face 24
The Battle 25
Ardent Memory 26
The Third Way 27
Sketchbook 29
Syllabication 30
Crazy Behavior 32
Furious with onathan 34
The Sacrifice 36
The Pelican 37
Silly Girl 38
Knife in the Chest 43
Biography of the Poet 45
The Meticulous One 47
Laetitia Cordis 48
History 49
Immolation 50
Opus Dei 51
In Portuguese 52
Parameter 53
Words and Names 54
The Tenacious Devil Who Doesn’t Exist 56
Matter 58
Form 59
Lighter Than Air 60
Guess 61
One More Time 62
Letter 63
Note from the Daring Damsel 65
One Thing After Another 66
Marvels 67
Irinity 60
The Last Supper 70
Pastoral 71
The Hermit’s Apprentice 72