(Charles Conder 1868-1909)

“Ó Nemésio”

Of course there’s always more in a
name than the Bard of Avon would

have you know when he sets up his
argument by singling out the rose.

That brings to mind that it’s Nemésio’s
name that’s called out, as it so often

happens, when it’s really Onésimo who
is standing there, the more familiar of

the two names being hard-wired into
the brain of this someone in the know.

“No matter, same difference” is how this
particular mix-up, this trapalhada, would

have been brushed away in the snappy,
know-it-all way of my confident youth.

History, though, is a different kettle of
fish, for it will sort out the two names,

distinguish between them carefully, and
then sit back and listen to the serão à deux.

Feb. 21/Mar. 3, 2013

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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.