Salgado Maranhão, one of Brazil’s leading contemporary poets, will read at Geneseo from his most recent collection, Sol Sangüíneo (Blood of the Sun), with his translator, Alexis Levitin, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Plattsburgh. In addition to eight books of poetry, including The Snake’s Fists, The Kiss of the Beast, and the recent Tiger’s Fur, Maranhão has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians.Maranhão
‘s white father was descended from a wealthy family whose plantations in the past had been worked by slaves. His mother was a black field worker who sang to him from her folk tradition. According to Maranhão, because “The Mansion” and “The Shanty” flow together in his veins, questions of race and history permeate several of the poems in his latest collection.
One of Brazil’s leading critics, Antonio Carlos Secchin, writes: “With a deeply-rooted personal diction, Salgado Maranhão, in Blood of the Sun, has reached the high point of his work (so far), in this cohesive collection of poems in which a speculative intelligence and a celebration of the corporality of the world are expressed with great metaphoric vigor.”