Eightentacles

Oitentacles brings together a collection of poems that reinvent Nei Lopes, one of the most important names in contemporary Brazilian literature and thought.

In Oitentacles , Nei Lopes reconstructs the past—his own and Brazil's—and launches himself toward the beyond. The 69 poems, most of them previously unpublished, transcend the trivialities that make earthly life a painful and suffocating martyrdom; they revere, with suburban humility, the mysteries that underpin hope and joy.

Recent poems mingle with others written between the 1960s and 1980s, "saved from shipwrecks in the sea of youth." Together, the texts present the main themes of Nei Lopes's lyre: Afro-Indigenous, Caribbean, and African-American ancestry, the song of the Black diaspora, and the cosmology of the orishas; the cleverness of his delivery, the wordplay, and the ever-paced rhythm; childhood memories, his academic and street education, the games and lessons learned as a young man in the Irajá neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro; and, above all, the commitment reaffirmed in his verses to "Poetry, Democracy, and Law."

Nei Lopes invites the audience to delve deeper into his extraordinary existence. An existence that transcends time, attuned to the most sophisticated aspects of the histories and customs of the Brazilian people, even those undermined by centuries of exclusion and persecution. If this sophistication is fully evident in "Oitentaculos ," it is largely due to the poet's ability to weave yesterday into the present. As Muniz Sodré once said, "Nei articulates himself in poetry and in life as a savior of tradition," for this selection of poems is also a reinterpretation of what is understood as erudition. Nei Lopes' poetry emerges from Brazilian culture as a perfect opportunity to parade his elegance and, thus, establish the certainty that his name will never be forgotten.

“Nei articulates himself in poetry and in life as a stimulator of tradition” – Muniz Sodré