One act of kindness brought a homeless poet's work out of obscurity

Raimundo Arruda Sobrinho wrote every day on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil for 35 years and no one knew what he was writing. Then, a women named Shalla Monteiro befriended him and brought his work out of obscurity.

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Raimundo Arruda Sobrinho had been homeless for 35 years when Shalla Monteiro met him in April 2011 in São Paulo,Brazil. He lived on a street median. Raimundo called it “The Island.”

He had become known as the homeless man who sat and wrote alone in that spot everyday. He always seemed to have pen and paper in hand. Still, few knew what he was writing. “When I saw him for the first time, he gave me one of his poems. From that moment, he started to be a part of my life,” Monteiro says in a documentary about the poet.

Monteira began collecting more of Raimundo’s small poems. She wanted to know more about who Raimundo was. She became his friend.

“Writing is his passion. He writes everyday,” Monteiro says. “Raimundo always wanted to publish a book of his poems and as a person who lived in the street, it seemed impossible to him.” Still, he wrote stories and poems every single day from his wooden stool. He took up whatever scraps of paper he could find, carefully cutting them to be the same size and dating them each with a serial number.

Hope is the heaviest weight a man can carry. It is the bane of the idealist. Signed, the Conditioned.

Raimundo is 77 years old. The poet and philosopher became homeless in the late 70s and has worked diligently for half his life on the streets in obscurity. That is, until Monteiro befriended him. She was impressed with her new friend’s work and decided to start a Facebook page for the poet. She wanted to publish Raimundo’s work so that others could see it and so that Raimundo could “recognize himself as a man and an artist.”

Material hygiene. Mental hygiene. Here, I don’t know which is harder to practice. Signed, the Conditioned.

Raimundo’s Facebook page currently has more than 140,000 fans who have been touched by his story. “As a writer myself, I find this man to be a great inspiration of hope for the rest of the world,” writes Erasmo L Gusman, Sept. 11. Many others are touched by Monteiro’s actions, “Thanks to you and Raimundo for blessing so many. We must never turn away from someone we may not understand. We might be turning away from an angel,” writes Audrey Van Vliet.

In São Paulo shortly after Raimundo’s work was published on the internet, people began to pay attention. They stopped by to say hello and chat with the poet just as Monteiro had done. Many even admitted that they always had wanted to talk with him, but were afraid to do so. Among those who wanted to contact Raimundo was his long lost brother who had sent a message through the Facebook page that Monteiro had set up.

His brother had wanted to find Raimundo for more than 57 years. When he came to the island, he’d found Raimundo surrounded by trash. His brother was unkempt, his hair matted, his body dirty. He was dressed in black plastic bags. It was a shock. “I suggested that he come live with me,” he said.

Damned is the man who abandons himself. These words show that the worse the situation is, never, ever should a man consider it lost. Signed, the Conditioned.

On April 23, 2013, Raimundo left “The Island” to live with his brother and his family. Now, Raimunda is a part of his family again and with Monteiro’s help, is working to publish his book.

*originally published at the now defunct Examiner.com

First Post of Many Poet's Journal Posts

It's time to post regularly.

I thought I would start with some poet's journal posts, most of which will come from a notebook I did for a poetry class in college (2006). I am partially copying my friend John May, whose autodidactic tendencies are both admirable and inspiring. His knowledge, poems, and explications are constantly growing. Please visit his blog. He does good work.

Between the old journal, the inspiration, and of course further readings on my own time, I hope to add to the conversation, or at least post tidbits here for me to revisit as I need or want to or can. Part of this blog then will be a poetry journal that I can access and share online.

I do hope that others will join in the conversation, post their thoughts, write their own posts, share their work, and on and on. I miss the classes, the friends, conversations, and the workshops. Here's hoping I retrieve back some of which I crave.

I wanted to start out with this, a quick essay over the question of whether poetry need be accessible. I would love to hear your thoughts. I see a couple of slippery slopes down there. I didn't edit them out because I'd love to be argued with. ;) Peace and junk:

Accessible Poetry First

"Poetry is knowledge, salvation, power, abandonment. 

The poem is a shell that echoes the music of the world."

--Octavio Paz.

The most potent poetry is universal. It communicates. Its aim is to translate abstractions and the human experience into language. It translates the subconscious, memory, sensual experiences and emotions through images, allusions, and a poet's perception. When a poem is inaccessible, it alienates the reader, guaranteeing a lack of connection between the reader and the poet. There is no communication. Many poets argue that they have a duty to connect with readers. Sylvia Plath for example, states that "one should be able to manipulate [their experiences] with an informed and intelligent mind...personal experience shouldn't be a kind of shut box and mirror-looking narcissistic. ...it should be generally relevant to such things as Hiroshima and Dachau...[things that others can relate to directly or indirectly]" (Alvarez).

Inaccessible poetry can offer grand mind games. It can send readers on scholastic scavenger hunts through dusty library book shelves and obscure articles in databases, as in the case of many of Ezra Pound's or T.S. Eliot's. The readers of such works will surely become smarter and more experienced. However, for those looking to solely connect, inaccessible poetry is a kill shot which can shock a reader from ever trying poetry again. William Carlos Williams states, in his poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," that though "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/...men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there."

This statement suggests that poetry is an extremely important medium for the understanding of things that are difficult to talk about or understand. Poetry approaches life's questions and though it does not always succeed in finding answers, it tries. It sends the message that the trying is worth the effort. In Poetry's search for understanding, it dually aids others in their own search as they read. To obscure the message in poems for the sake of being elite is to shirk the Poet's duty and to greedily hoard the message for a select number. It is a tactic that can make the way too difficult for readers uninterested in scholastic exercises. Elitism suggests that one must become a person of letters in order to understand the work. Any reader communing with poetry wants to be touched by it. If it is not understood, it is difficult to feel anything. 

Work Cited: Alvarez, A. Sylvia Plath. Beyond All This Fiddle. London: Penguin, 1968. pp. 56-7.

The Two Kinds of Decay

The first word that initially came to mind after reading Sarah Manguso's book, The Two Kinds of Decay, was "stark." The subject matter could be what brought that word to mind. Add to that, the author's treatment of her memoir as distanced, if not clinical. Her writing is very controlled. She also shirks sentimentalities effectively, despite the painful and personal nature of the material. Further, the short chapters, block paragraphs, and abundance of white space seem to form a visual context of strict form.

These are a poet's tools, without a doubt. Though the style of the piece, its voice, and tone initially threw me, I appreciate the tools Manguso used a lot more now. She is consistent and uses her devices deftly and with purpose.

Manguso describes, studiously, with clarity and concision, medical procedures, characters and events from her life, her confessions, as well as the hows of living with a rare form of Guillain--Barre syndrome. The book could be a sort of polished journal in which she writes with disregard to time and instead writes in what sequence the details make sense to her. The book is a recounting, wound tightly to a couple of principles which I can very much appreciate and relate. She writes constantly from the point of observation, distance, and simply, so that nothing is missed and the reader is held close to the text until the end. In the end, the reader is not left with a hole, or depressed, and not even with apathy, but with a new way of seeing that the author herself has come to and shown quite well.

The book is poetic in a meaning-follows-form kind of way. The crisp precision of Manguso's narrative, the observant distance with which she relates her story, the segments of short chapters and blocked paragraphs which reveal a bounty of white space on the pages, and the chapter titles around which the author seems to write certain memories as if they were prompts, come to mind. I would even argue that there is a poetic turn where Manguso explains a way of seeing that has become a part of this work:

My existence shrank from an arrow of light pointing into the future forever to a speck of light that was the present moment. I got better at living in that point of light, making the world into that point. I paid close attention to it. I loved it very much.

Further, an affirmation that the author is very studied in her treatment of the material. She writes a note about how such things (memoirs) should be written:

I resisted as long as I could. A narrator must keep a safe distance from the story, but a lyric speaker must occupy the lyric moment as if it is happening. Or so it seems to me at this moment.

I believe that Sarah Manguso has done the job she has described above well. Because of this work, I have ordered her books of poems and am anxious to read them soon.

originally published for Explication. Analysis. Conversation. (http://explicanalyconvo.blogspot.com/), October 16, 2010 and crossposted at GoodReads (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/126421469).