Game Over

by Manuel de Freitas

123 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Manuel de Freitas was born in 1972 and has lived in Lisbon since 1990, where he took a degree in Modern Languages and Literatures, majoring in Portuguese and French. He made his debut as poet in 2000, with Todos Contentes e Eu Também, and since then has published eighteen further books of poems and chapbooks, a number of essays on contemporary Portuguese poetry, as well as an anthology provocatively entitled Poetas Sem Qualidades [Poets without Qualities], in which he brings together some of the most significant names of his generation such as Rui Pires Cabral, José Miguel Silva and Ana Paula Inácio. He is also a translator, a literary critic for the weekly Expresso and runs the small Lisbon Publishing House, Averno, with Inês Dias, which not only publishes books by national and foreign poets, but also the most interesting Portuguese literary magazine to have appeared in a number of years: Telhados de Vidro. Considering the importance of his own poetry and also his activities as an essayist, critic and editor, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to predict that he will come to be considered the central figure in Portuguese poetry of the first decade of the 21st century.

Reviews

[MT · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Comecei a escrever um poema sobre ti,
mas esqueci-me do teu rosto
e do modo como o trazes
à altura excessiva do chão. Regressei então
aos meus mais comuns lugares
e falei (como falo sempre)
da morte que pratico sem razão à vista.

Por este andar, não volto a encontrar
o meu sonoro estilo adolescente,
tão despido de certezas como de comércios
literários - e torna-se-me difícil
escrever um poema de amor
apenas com os restos de quem fui
e com o pouco que desse amor não tive.

Hei-de voltar a ver-te, quem sabe?,
traficando a imperícia sob o cronómetro
dos meus ombros - e saberei então
que os eléctricos que se perdem
conduzem invariavelmente a um poema alheio
e que por isso, embora sem ser por isso,
o nosso desencontro é uma estória
inútil entre aspas de betão.”

SESSENTA QUILOS DE PAIXÃO