Callaloo

Xavier, Arnaldo.
Guidorizzi, M. Christina, tr.
The Greatest Poet that God Creole
Callaloo - Volume 18, Number 4, Fall 1995, pp. 777-795

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Arnaldo Xavier - The Greatest Poet that God Creole - Callaloo 18:4 Callaloo 18.4 (1995) 777-795 THE GREATEST POET THAT GOD CREOLE by Arnaldo Xavier "They say I am crazy / because I climbed a coconut tree / I came down with the coconut / from the coconut tree / and I opened the coconut to see if the coconut / was hollow. (Anonymous Author). I There are several studies on Cordel Literature in Brazil. The extraordinary fact that Cordel Literature is produced by the poor for the poor and has survived the technological impacts on the means of modern communication secures its place as a continual object of study. Cordel Literature derives from Luso-Hispanic (Iberian) popular ballad forms, and has been reshaped by oral tradition in African orature, particularly in the totemic figure of the griots with their orikis [poems] and akplaôs [short stories]. Thus, Cordel Literature has acquired a specific form which gives it such a singular originality that its creative influences have spread to more sophisticated spaces of Brazilian art. Examples include the sertanejo dimension of the monarchical amorality in the works of Ariano Suassuna, the concreteness of the economic language of poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto, the constructivism of Guimarães Rosa's novels, Luiz Gonzaga's dazzling solar music, the social chronicle of José Lins do Rego's regionalist novel, Marcos Acioly's "northeasternist" epic poems, the classic Rebellion in the Backlands by Euclides da...