A Prairie Schooner Portfolio
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Portuguese Poetry
From Prow to Plowshare
In April 2001 António Ladeira invited David Oliveira and me to read poetry at his Yale University conference "Portuguese American Literature: The First One Hundred Years." There we met major poets in the Portuguese-American literary community, including Diniz Borges, Onesima Almeida, Frank Gaspar, and most notably, George Monteiro of Brown University, whom I consider the dean of Portuguese letters.
Monteiro spoke to us of Alfred Lewis, whose first stories were published in Prairie Schooner. He compared Lewis to Willa Cather, both children of immigrants carving out a place in the new land. In Cather's vision of the plow magnified in My Ántonia, I saw a metaphor for a ship's prow, for Portuguese settlers, seafaring people and fishermen who became farmers. They came first from the mainland of Portugal to the Azores to establish their dairy farms, which they exported to California. Among those who settled on the East Coast of the United States, some remained fishermen and some became poets.
With this portfolio we bring Portuguese-American poets together in the pages of Prairie Schooner. Oliveira, whose grandparents came from Terceira, offers contemporary writing. Portuguese-American António Ladeira, from Lisboa and now Texas Tech University in Lubbock, takes us back to where it all started, Portugal.
We dedicate this collection to the brave sailors from Portugal who discovered the Azores, where the prow became the plowshare, and to those who sailed on to dwell in the New World.
Glenna Luschei
António Ladeira grew up in southern Portugal and earned his PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was hired at Yale University as Camões Professor of Portuguese. He published three books of poetry in Portugal: As Sombras do Silêncio / The Shadows of Silence (Derrane Publications), Todas as Línguas São Estrangeiras / All Languages Are Foreign Languages (O Contador de Histórias), A Minha Cor Favorita è a Neve / Snow Is My Favorite Color (Escritor). He now teaches at Texas Tech in Lubbock.
Glenna Luschei has published the poetry magazines Café Solo, Solo, and Solo Café for forty years. She was named poet laureate of San Luis Obispo City and County for the year 2000. Luschei completed her PhD studies in Hispanic languages and literatures at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
David Oliveira, a second generation Portuguese American, was born and raised in California's San Joaquin Valley. He is the author of a book of poems, A Little Travel Story (Harbor Mountain P), and a chapbook, In the Presence of Snakes (Brandenburg P). He is a professor of English at Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.
