(Joan Miró )

In 1970, the United States Information Service sent two of us, the critic and playwright Joel Pontes (1926-1977) and me, to lecture throughout the north of Brazil.

Recife, Fortaleza, Manaus

“No doubt, Joel is a party boy,” noted

Jake, our U.S.I.S. man in Belem, and so,

I guess, he was.  But he had other qualities,

too.  For instance, he instructed me-ah,

português!” (hear his exasperation)-in how

to turn a paletot outside-in before folding

it into my suitcase-and he charmed me by

explaining why he bought so many little

gifts everywhere we went: “I stuff my

pockets with as many small things as I can

so that when I get home, my young daughter

will discover them, one after the other, to

her delight, and to my wife’s pleasure.”

Aug. 5, 2010

Windham, CT

George Monteiro is Professor Emeritus of English and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University, and he continues as Adjunct Professor of Portuguese Studies at the same university. He served as Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Brazil–Sao Paulo and Bahia–Ecuador and Argentina; and as Visiting Professor in UFMG in Belo Horizonte. In 2007 he served as Helio and Amelia Pedroso / Luso-American Foundation Professor of Portuguese, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Among his recent books are Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage, Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, The Presence of Pessoa, The Presence of Camões, and Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop and Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Among his translations are Iberian Poems by Miguel Torga, A Man Smiles at Death with Half a Face by José Rodrigues Miguéis, Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems by Fernando Pessoa, and In Crete, with the Minotaur, and Other Poems by Jorge de Sena. He has also published two collections of poems, The Coffee Exchange and Double Weaver’s Knot.

IMAGE:  Joan Miró “Carnival of Harlequin” Print – 1924-1925 (http://joanmiro.com/)