One Impossible Step: Selected Poems

A selection of extraordinarily condensed, emotionally complex, philosophical poems by one of the most unique and highly regarded 20th century Brazilian poets.




In her lifetime, Orides Fontela resisted all labels, all attempts to situate her work in a particular movement, school, tendency, or tradition. Here, in the first ever English language collection, Fontela's poems continue to defy easy categorization. In these concise, meditative poems, Fontela's bird and flower, water and stone, blood and star can be read as symbols, indicating a possible tendency toward mysticism, but also represent themselves, concrete entities and objects, instances of the immensely variegated matter that exists throughout the universe. Including an illuminating statement of poetics and excerpts from her often acerbic interviews, One Impossible Step introduces English-language audiences to an iconoclast who remains one across languages and decades.