POR AÍ

Like a Prayer

"Dealing with a completely different culture is a process, and I will always be in the middle of that process," says jazz flutist extraordinaire Ali Ryerson with characteristic modesty about her latest release Brasil: Quiet Devotion.

The Concorde Picante label's new CD contains five originals by the Rio-born and California-based pianist/composer/arranger Weber Drummond, as well as the rarely-heard "Chovendo na Roseira" by the late Tom Jobim. This is not the first time Ryerson has ventured into Brazilian territory. Last year she flirted with bossa nova and jazz samba on In Her Own Sweet Way. The inspiration for Brasil: Quiet Devotion came after an extended period of practice with Drummond and another Carioca musician, legendary percussionist Hélcio Milito, Tamba Trio's drummer in the '60s.

Handheld Art

Brazilian art in some of its manifestations should soon be available through American bookstore chain giant Barnes & Noble. Brazilian painter Sônia Menna Barreto has signed a contract with the company, which has 350 bookstores in the U.S., for distribution of notebooks, cards, and agendas illustrated with her paintings.

Barreto's American adventure is very promising. The artist has had four of her paintings being shown at New York's Ambassador Galleries since last September.

South Verses

Great news for Brazilian poets who are virtually unknown even in their own country. Twenty poets who made their names at the end of the '60s and afterwards now have their own anthology in the U.S., Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain, a bilingual work published by Sun & Moon Press. The book is a collaboration among Brazilian poets Régis Bonvicino and Nélson Ascher, American poet Michael Palmer, and Brazilian academic João Almino, professor of Brazilian literature at Stanford and Berkeley universities in California.

The anthology brings together tropicalist Torquato Neto with Paulo Leminski, who wrote a type of poetry known as marginal. The book also includes Francisco Alvim, Nélson Ascher, Carlos Ávila, Carlito Azevedo, Frederico Barbosa, Josely Vianna Baptista, Lenora de Barros, Régis Bonvicino, Ângela de Campos, Age de Carvalho, Rui Vasconcelos de Carvalho, Ana Cristina César, Horácio Costa, Júlio Castañon Guimarães, Duda Machado, Cláudia Roquete Pinto, and Waly Salomão.

In 1972, American poet Elizabeth Bishop published Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry with poems of such greats as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira. Eleven years later there was Brazilian Poetry—1950-1980, organized by William J. Smith and Emanuel Brasil. Among the poets included in this work were Ferreira Gullar and the concretists.