Saudade

by 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.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2017

About the author

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), winner of the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award.

Reviews

[Théo d'Or]

Saudade....Maintenant, je sais ce que c'est.
Je l'ai ressentie pour la première fois lorsque j'ai quitté la maison de mon enfance, cet endroit où chaque coin portait l'empreinte d'un souvenir. Je me revois encore fermer la porte derrière moi, valise à la main, en sachant que rien ne serait plus jamais pareil.
La saudade, elle, a pris place à mes côtés, ce jour-là.
Hier, en me promenant dans mon vieux cartier, je suis tombé sur une boulangerie qui sentait exactement comme celle de ma rue, quand j'étais enfant. L'odeur du pain chaud m'a happé, comme un courant qui m'a ramené des années en arrière, à ces matins où j'allais chercher une baguette avec mon grand-père. Mais alors que je m'approchais, un pincement m'a traversé le cœur... cette boulangerie -là n'existe plus, tout comme ces matins - là. La saudade, pour moi, c'est cet instant suspendu entre la joie et la douleur. Parfois, la saudade est une compagne douce, comme une couverture qui me réchauffe, alors que je revis mes souvenirs les plus précieux.
D'autres fois, elle est cruelle, me rappelant tout ce qui est parti, tout ce qui ne reviendra jamais.
Mais je ne voudrais pas m'en passer, parce qu'elle est la preuve que ces instants ont existé, qu'ils ont compté. Et, au fond, peut-être que la saudade est ce qui me pousse à chérir davantage le présent, pour ne pas ajouter un regret de plus à sa collection.
Et maintenant, je sens la saudade m'écraser, comme un poids que je ne pourrai jamais poser. Ce n'est plus une simple absence qui me hante, mais la certitude que ces instants ont glissé entre mes doigts, pour toujours...
Je ferme les yeux..et dans le noir, je les revois tous, ces rires, ces visages, ces moments, vivants comme jamais. Mais quand je rouvre les yeux, tout ce qu'il reste est un ombre, une larme qui refuse de tomber.
Alors, je reste là, figé, entre ce qui fut et ce qui ne sera jamais.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traci Brimhall's exploration of the myths of her family and wrestles with the angels and demons of her past: Brazil's 1964's coup and the nostalgia for the Brazil of her family, the mixture of Catholic and Protestant with pre-Christian beliefs, lushness of the amazon basin mix with the brutality of the people's lived and imagined history. As Brimhall states, "The end of biography is death . . . the end of mythology is forgetfulness," and Brimhall invites into the tension that is in that eclipse. A very powerful collection that walks the line between the everyday miraculous and the banality of history's trauma. Great stuff.

[Brandon Amico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brimhall has created a whole world—history, language, mythology—and made it sing. There are few writers as wildly inventive or precise as Brimhall—and even fewer than can match her at both. Possibly none. Her poems explode into readers’ minds and lay down roots there. Love this book.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the Latin, Saudade is a feeling of melancholy, longing or nostalgia. A historical ancestral book of poems rich and thick with imagery. I loved the last lines of her acknowledgements: “And for my mother, whose stories ended too soon and were never finished and are where I begin everything.”
Here is a poem from this book I want to return to:

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

An electric eel can deliver shocks of 860 volts,
enough to knock a horse off its feet, or kill a woman
washing yellow feathers from her breasts, or stun a god

backstroking through the mangroves. A fact is a thing
of intimacy. A god is mere hypothesis. A mother is
a grief. The rotted body of a horse is a home for an eel.

The line breaks are important in her poems! Then there are the women in the chorus, also fascinating. Enjoy

[Joy Vd · Rating 4 out of 5]

occasionally spectacular.

[J.L. Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really interesting moments and elements, but this one didn't grip me like some of Brimhall's other collections have. It just didn't quite work as purely poetry but also wasn't narrative enough for that to feel complete. This may just be my taste, though. Perfectly ok but not the one I'd recommend to someone to try this author.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

My library sent me the wrong Saudade but I read this one anyway. Part poetry, part novel in verse maybe? Beautiful writing and imagery.

[D.A. Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are poems and collections that resist easy understanding, yet draw the reader in through the senses, structure, and by making brief contact with familiar references. The feeling of longing for persons, for things, for a hand, or even a god that are absent can be felt throughout. Details which can’t necessarily be found in histories are missing. The myths, imagination, and storytelling fill in the gaps – something one of the speakers asserts, saying ‘The end of biography is death / . . . / the end of mythology is forgetfulness.’ (from ‘Rapture: Lucus’). There is a connection dependent on memory, for stories to be passed down or at least for this generation to interrogate the past.

Imagery and allusions do not come from one set of myths though much of the animal and plantlife and terrain emerge from Brazil – references to classical ideas such as the Chorus, and to Western Christianity merge with a pre-Christian sense of sacredness leading a speaker to challenge belief, saying ‘They don’t believe you exist / even though they wrap slices of lamb / in the pages of the book you wrote / for the illiterate shepherds’ (from ‘Incomplete Address to the Lord’) and later to speak of an ambivalent god with an ‘ambition / to be free of us’ (from ‘Sanctuary’). The fusion of established ideals into places that precede those ideals challenges the reader to listen rather than assume or impose.

The title poem ‘Saudade’ closes the collection with a Prospero-like monologue, shifting attention from the story to the speaker. Where Prospero asks to be set free, the poet and mythmaker expresses a desire for ‘a world of my own’, a place ‘where everything is true but retreats when you try / to touch it.’ In this way the past comes to seem more ‘endless’ to the speaker and the poems, rather than simply being a riddle solved (which I don’t think I could) and placed on the shelf, become a starting point.

[Mia Sitterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You’re entitled to your miracle, but this isn’t it. The hope of this moment will hurt with age.”

[Maren · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH MY GOD my body is physically aching from reading this

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Already a huge fan of Brimhall, her latest collection of poetry did not disappoint. Saudade was as impressive as it was expansive--detailing an anachronous family history woven with myth, violence, and trepidation. Brimhall's form and voice changed section to section, pulling on recurring images from the family narrative like a snagged thread in the hem of a sweater. The richness of these poems was one I will delight in again and again.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a Traci Brimhall fan, you're in for a treat. Brimhall is a master of myth, and approaches family mythology with a new slant of persona via family members and the chorus of Marias. These poems are sensual and full of body, wild and full of transitions that make you stop and have to catch your breath over how every line leads perfectly to the next. There are many poems I'll be thinking about ("If Marriage Is a Duel at Ten Paces," "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," "Translation Theory," "Saudade"), and many others I'll return to to be stunned back into how we can play with language when we let wildness in.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

My god, what a gorgeous origin story this is. You don't read this collection, you taste it, feel it, all over. Knowing it the way you know your own body, yet at the same time it's delightfully exotic, erotic, and mercurial. This is a story that asks you to follow it deep into the Amazon rain forest, yet your footing changes at the turn of every line, like the place it describes. Saudade is a mirage, dazzling.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not exactly sure what I just read, but it was stunning and I am breathless.

[Barton Smock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A guerrilla prays faster. – {from} And Again I Say Rejoice

…I am orphic / am ophidian am orphan – {from} Misbegotten

In narrating the rebirth of grief in an unbegun world, in her Saudade, Traci Brimhall is both researcher and magician and together they wrestle nostalgia from the stasis of the jarringly doomed. The verse, here, is specific in its allness and, where history burns, Brimhall makes of word a thin sun and spares the ant the miracle of the half-circle.

This is heady stuff- traversal as transformation, a fluid storytelling of signs and markers, the novel as the church of the poem- and is nailed down, expertly, with an impending suddenness.

It is not preordained in feel, it is more…blessed? All inquiries mine, I felt like I was reading with each page what so clearly came next. This endeavor is a language, the calm glow of which rubs off on every disappearance.

[Patti K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 2017 volume of poetry is Brimhall's third book. It took some time
to fully engage in its arc taken through the Amazon and Brazilian imagery
and folklore. But then, it was a nearly magical mystery tour. Its epigraph
explains the title and is from a poem by Nick Cave: "Saudade, or longing, is
the desire to be transported from/darkness into light/ to be touched by the
hand of that which is not of this world." Many of the poems portray the grief
following the death of an infant. "Even before you imagined us, we knew you."

[K.C. Bratt-Pfotenhauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If marriage is a war for independence, I'll find a feather

for my cap and shoot you from your horse." (p. 56)

In every collection, Brimhall manages to create a fantastic world, in this one, turning a family tree into its own mythology with its own ritual and nuances. It's a stunning, at times funny, reminder of the magic that lies in the telling of our stories. Would highly, highly recommend.

[David Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than a collection powerful poems, this is a story told in sections of verse by a series of connected narrators. Life, death, and supernatural imagery along the Amazon in a time of flood and other tragedies. Compelling, entertaining, and disquieting in equal measure for this reader.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I read this, I kept thinking of the word "lush." The language is lush. The myth-making is lush. The expanse of the book's family tree is lush. There's a sense of humidity in the descriptiveness. This is a collection that very much absorbs you into its world.

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like a dream, a dream that you cannot quite remember as you wake with tears on your face. It’s honestly the oddest, most beautiful thing I’ve read in a long while.

[Amanda Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love loved loved this magical collection.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Myth, ancestry, collapsing of time: this collection of poetry, which reads almost like a fragmented novel, has all of the things I love in poetry.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another keeper. Brimhall's lyrical voice deserves a permanent space on your bookshelf. Longing through time...

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not entirely sure what I just read, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

[Ami Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an incredible collection of poetry! The writing is astounding. This was a second read for me.

[Martina McGowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the title poem, “Saudade” “… If only the past would have me now that I have its answers- it’s griefs and inheritances. I’ve given at least half my faith to madness, the rest
to the chapters written for those who were made for more loneliness.”
Beautiful poetry, great story telling.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5