You will always be remembered for your kindness, knowledge, humility and friendship.
We will also miss your mentorship, and the outstanding academic contributions to the InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies, as well as the Interdisciplinary Studies in Diasporas Book Series,
Thank you.
POEM 1
Amália
With no English to speak of, Amália
sang on the Roberta Quinlan Show
sponsored by a carpet-maker hawking
wares from the “Looms of Mohawk.”
“Hi-Lilie, Hi-Lo” was pretty much what
Portugal’s fadista could manage in
the money-language she would never
bring to heel. Paris was hers, but the
city of New York would never be.
POEM 2
Celeste
She died yesterday, at 95,
the youngest sister of the
nation’s number one
fadista. I met her once,
in Lisbon, at an obscure
(to me) fado house. She
sang and then circulated
among the tables peddling
her tapes. “I know who
you are,” said someone,
“and I have your tapes at
home.” So he bought
none. And neither did
I, though, at home,
I had not a one.
(InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies, Vol. 8, 2019)
POEM 3
The Diaspora of the Word
(for Joseph “JoGo” Gouveia)
I, who have no particular credentials for writing any of these words;
I, who have no memories to jog your memory of things or times shared;
I, who have laid eyes on you once and only once, and that but a few months ago when we
shared (with others) a place and a time to read our poems;
I, who have nevertheless followed your posts about poetry and pain, illness and friendship, hope and the fear that is never presented center stage in your works and days; I, who must not intrude where others, more intimately of the elect, come forth, one by one, with their poems;
yet I dare to speak out, as you do, for the flesh of poetry, the speech of all poetry,
denying silence its will to quench the word.
(InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies, Vol. 8, 2019)
George Monteiro (May 23, 1932- Nov, 06, 2019). Professor Emeritus, Brown University, was a lifelong student and teacher of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, contributing to the scholarship on numerous writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and Bob Dylan. George
Monteiro. Latest publications include among others: Caldo Verde Is Not Stone Soup:Persons, Names,
Words, and Proverbs in Portuguese America. Peter Lang Academic Publishers, 2017 (Series: Interdisciplinary Studies in Diasporas; There’s No Word for <<Saudade>>: Perspectives on the Literature and Culture of Portuguese America.
Peter Lang Academic Publishers, 2017 (Series: Interdisciplinary Studies in Diasporas).
