I stumbled across these recently, and maybe you hadn´t. They are gems.

The first is the Brazilian legend- probably better to say a legend from Brazil – Tom Jobim with Frank Sinatra (two legends in one),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKopU-Y7tQ&mode=related&sear
ch=

and then with Andy Williams,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHKtUceKYVs

My, that Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams – and Jobim – could sing. (Whom do you like better, Jobim with Frank or Andy?)

This as well is sublime, a performance by Stan Getz and João Gilberto,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSgvvbCQq9c

“Portuguese is generally more logical, economical, and sonorous than English.”

I don´t have the capacity to make such sweeping statements, unfortunately.

I have lived in Brazil for many years, and Portuguêse, is not that, in my unsweeped opinion. I find the language dances around the tree, rather than aims for the bullseye.

My Brazilian friends, warm with mass, when discussing English literature or listening to English music say, “Please, tell me again the words that we just heard, of this artist.” I tell them the words translated, into Portuguêse. They, patient, but excited, say, in their perfect English “No, repeat it in English. I want to feel the words in your tongue, slowly and naturally.”

After many years of listening to Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes or Nascimento, my Brazilian friends are sensitized to the feel of the cidade maravílhosa, to the rítmo of the street, one onda after another.

Unlike and with them, I still find the culture, slowly absorbed, romantic, metaphorical and winked.

“Portuguese is generally more logical, economical, and sonorous than English.”

I have lived in Brazil for more than a few years, and Portuguese, is not that, but more dancing aroung the tree.

And my Brazili

Maybe I should have said “refuse” rather than “garbage.”

Nascimento’s remarking upon these kinds of poets and their poetry raises many interesting questions for me. One is about “place” and how it affects one’s writing. The “poets” these lyrics describe suffer from displacement — that is, they’re not really rooted by anything except injuries, ghosts, sadness, etc. which IMO are all antithetical to “rootedness.” Does that last line “As if they were looking to later return to Rio de Janeiro” suggest to you that these people are lost, that they have no sense of “home” and so their language is sadly adrift, like refuse blowing about?

Cordiero: Sez u!

Sure! Discuss the content! The garbage thing is interesting. I also see the inconclusive flies as the tortured words themselves scribbled on the napkins.

Also, I couldn’t resist the urge to substitute “bloggers” for “poets.” Ha ha!

Reading this poem reminds me of my time in the English dept. at the U of A, where poetry was treated as serious business, indeed.

Are we allowed to discuss the song’s content? Funny that you said, “Maybe sometimes the best we can hope for is that the songs stuck in our heads are not complete garbage” about a song that, while not being itself garbage, intimates something about the trash content (including those fly-bespotted paper napkins) of the singer’s city.

I like these lyrics tremendously. Thank you very much for translating them for us.