Book, Rare sea[LS]

The poems that open Raro Mar are about literary craftsmanship: "Another recipe" talks about the "final result of the workshop" as a repair of words, in which the poetic carpentry has no time to finish. The influences of modernism, in constructive precision and lyricism, are felt in allusions to Mário de Andrade, Carlos Drummond, Manuel Bandeira and João Cabral de Melo Neto. To the modernist ideas, Armando Freitas Filho adds the experimentalism and aesthetic ease learned through coexistence with marginal poetry and the poets of the new generation. The social and urban transformation of Rio de Janeiro is also present in the book. The historical process caused the Rio sea to become "rare". Rio has spread out, and the sea that preserves the city's splendor today coexists with crowds, consumption, weapons, trafficking, automation. The "Numeral" series brings together poems written over more than two years, which are linked together like a poetic diary. In them, the passage of time gives shape to the author's most dear themes: sensuality, the body as an enigma, death and the current of life. If the scope of the verses in difficult times approaches daydreaming, Armando Freitas Filho's poetry imposes itself with the strength of a dream.