The Alphabet in the Park

Book excerpt: Poetry that eloquently concentrates on the spiritual and physical lives of women. This is the first book published in English by of the work of Brazilian poet Adélia Prado. Incorporating poems published over the past fifteen years, The Alphabet in the Park is a book of passion and intelligence, wit and instinct. These are poems about human concerns, especially those of women, about living in one's body and out of it, about the physical but also the spiritual and the imaginative life. Prado also writes about ordinary matters; she insists that the human experience is both mystical and carnal. To Prado these are not contradictory: "It's the soul that's erotic," she writes. As Ellen Watson says in her introduction, "Adélia Prados poetry is a poetry of abundance. These poems overflow with the humble, grand, various stuff of daily life – necklaces, bicycles, fish; saints and prostitutes and presidents; innumerable chickens and musical instruments…And, seemingly at every turn, there is food." But also, an abundance of dark things, cancer, death, greed. These are poems of appetite, all kinds.