Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes

by Corsino Fortes, Daniel Hahn (Translator), Sean O'Brien (Translator)

Concerned with giving voice to Cape Verdean life, Fortes writes in Cape Verdean Creole - and not just standard Portuguese - a powerful statement reinforcing the islands' distinctive African nature. However, his poems are often written from the perspective of an exile - and themes of exile and redemptive return recur in his work. This collection introduces English readers to Fortes, and the poet's beautiful and unique use of language.

Genres: Poetry, Africa

150 pages, Paperback

First published October 21, 2014

About the author

Corsino António Fortes nasceu em 14 de fevereiro de 1933, em Mindelo, ilha de São Vicente, Cabo Verde. Licenciado em Direito (Lisboa, 1966), veio a exercer as funções de delegado do Ministério Público e juiz de direito, em Angola, até ser exonerado a seu pedido, em abril de 1975, do cargo de magistrado. Em 1974-1975, como militante ativo do P.A.I.G.C. exerceu as funções de representante do Partido em Angola, de diretor-geral dos Assuntos Judiciários da República da Guiné-Bissau e de emissário especial da República de Cabo Verde junto dos Governos da República Popular de Angola e da República Democrática de São Tomé e Príncipe. Entre 1975 e 1981, foi embaixador extraordinário e plenipotenciário da República de Cabo Verde junto da República Portuguesa, desempenhando idênticas funções junto dos Governos de Espanha, França, Itália, Noruega e Islândia. Em 1981, foi nomeado secretário de Estado-adjunto do primeiro-ministro e, em 1983, secretário de Estado da Comunicação Social. Entre 1986 e 1989, regressa à diplomacia como embaixador de Cabo Verde junto da República Popular de Angola. Entre 1989 e 1991, exerce as funções de ministro da Justiça pelo Governo de Cabo Verde. Hoje exerce as seguintes funções: Presidente da Fundação Amílcar Cabral, Presidente do Conselho de Administração da Inpar – Companhia Cabo-Verdiana de Seguros, Vice-presidente do Conselho de Administração da Caixa Econômica de Cabo Verde, e Sócio-fundador da Associação dos Escritores cabo-verdianos. Foi condecorado pelo Governo Português com a Grã-Cruz da Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique e com a Grã-Cruz da Ordem de Mérito, pelo Governo Francês com o Grand officier de L’ordre nacional du Mérite: e pela Presidência da República de Cabo Verde com a Ordem do Vulcão.

Fonte: http://www.escrituras.com.br/livro.ph...

Reviews

[Sue]

While reading and now that I have completed reading this book of poetry by the Cape Verdean author Corsino Fortes, I have wondered how I would possibly review it let alone rate it. There is much that is beautiful and also emotional here but there is also much that is so foreign to my sensibilities in the language and structure. The poetry has been translated first from Fortes' Cape Verdean everyday language to English then into a more approachable English. I have actually looked up a few of the words found in the poetry to seek further enlightenment, words such as Morna and Cazenga.

I learned that Cazenga is a city in Angola. Morna is Cape Verdean music, actually considered the national music of the islands; music with themes of love, departure to live abroad, the return home, love of the homeland, the sea. All of these are major themes of Fortes' writing, so perhaps his poetry has much in common with the Morna.

Now to provide a couple of examples of the poetry that impressed me.
From Mouth to Windward


Poet! the poem entire
geometry of blood and phenome
I listen listen

A pestle speaks
trees laden with fruit at noonday And on the
hill drums (loc 42)


And another....


On the ground
In the Lisboan night
The Archipelago of my feet Has ten
surprised toes

Train is sleep train is lamp
Train is wheel train is lamp
Train is lamp raised in my broken face
Train is a wheel in my broken bones
In my broken bones in my broken bones
In my broken bones in my broken bones.

.....
Night

The night is the stove where my face is lit up
The moon has a cat's icy face
The stars are scattered like corn in the sky

Train is sleep train is wheel
Train is sleep train is wheel
It has sleep it has wheels it has horns It has
sleep it has wheels it has breasts. (loc 129)


These poems intrigue me even while I find myself wondering where they are going. And lastly, from The Fisherman the Fish and the Peninsula:


Fisherman! before the gathering on the
shore The sign of dawn is still a conch
Brought by the waves
.....
From the words and music of the final tide
And the foot of the wind to keep time

the choreographer
in the thundering of the wave
The boats depart
Following the sign of the rowers in the prow
AND

In the calm of the prow
On the warlike waves
The boats carry in their souls

The final morna of the island
.....
Then we saw! in a flash
The fields of fins
Over juniper waves
They break and dance
The paso doble in the furrows of the sea (loc 334)


As can be seen in these samples, the themes of the sea, nature, leaving and returning all figure prominently throughout his poetry. The text is bilingual also.

I have resolved my inner conflict and decided not to rate this book. Just too much of a cultural difference for me to pass that type of judgment here.



A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

[Rise]

"All of parting is power in death / And all return is a child learning to spell", wrote the Cape Verdean poet Corsino Fortes (b. 1933). These lines ended the poem "Emigrant" from his first collection of poems Pão & Fonema (Bread & Phoneme, 1974). The emigrant's homecoming and leavetaking were equated with learning her native language. The emigrant's own return perfected her learning through mastery of the language. Full review: http://booktrek.blogspot.com/2014/09/...

[Meri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cabo Verde...

Reflections from beyond the wind-washed sea.

"Oh when morning breaks
And Christ descends from his dwelling
And comes
to the right arm of Monte Cara
With the handle of his hoe
And his drill shorts
Barefoot
With a split finger
And sits down
At our round cooking-stone
With no rain in his hand
No weakness in his blood
No crow in his heart

Oh when
Oh when the morning breaks."

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some poems were actually stunning. I'd say all, but it seems like the book definitely had some moments where he became a bit too engimatic.

[Tonymess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Corsino Fortes was born in Mindelo on the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde in 1933. Serving as the first Ambassador of Cape Verde to Portugal from 1975 to 1981 he went on to become a judge in Angola and served several govenments in the Cape Verde Republic. Writing in both Creole and Portuguese, the works in this collection have been translated from poems written in Portuguese the official language of the ten island archipelago.


Earlier this year I read and reviewed “By Night The Mountain Burns” by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (translated by Jethro Soutar) from Equatorial Guinea, a work set off the West African Coast of this nation and whilst reading Corsino Fortes’ poems there was a strong correlation to the island imagery used in Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel


It only takes a poem or two to see these works are rooted in Cape Verde mythology and way of life, with recurring images of blood, the meridian, drums, guitars and the sea. From a widely travelled writer, and one who spent a significant time living overseas you can almost feel the pain of being forced to escape your roots, there is no escape:

For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/20...

[Alexander Asay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is a selection of Fortes’ work in English, drawn across his career and shaped to introduce an island poetics rooted in Cape Verde’s land, sea, and migrations. The poems arrive dense and elemental images that work like tools rather than ornaments.

Fortes writes from an archipelago and for an archipelago. Exile is a lived condition, return a pressure rather than a promise. The diction moves between the ceremonial and the workmanlike; what seems incantatory is built from the concrete. The poems make a cosmology out of subsistence so that history is felt first in the body and only then named.

Formally, the sequences accrete by echo and variation. Refrains tighten, images recur with slight turns, and meaning arrives by accumulation. The result demands a slow read. There is little narrative release, only a steady deepening, an atlas of small intensities.

As an introduction, the curation works. It sketches the arc from early, newly postcolonial urgency to later, more meditative registers without turning the book into a museum of moments. For readers coming fresh to Lusophone African poetry, the selection shows why Fortes matters as the poems are local without provincialism and political without slogan.

[World Literature Today]

This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the January/February 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...