Quadrada Quaderna

Salette Tavares and João Cabral de Melo Neto

Abstract

In the foreword of the complete poems of Salette Tavares, Obra Poética 1957-1971 (1992), Luciana Stegagno Picchio argues that the correlations, or the elective affinities, if we like, of Tavares’ poems with João Cabral de Melo Neto’s body of work had not been rightfully highlighted. Since then, this precise diagnosis made by the Italian literary critic and specialist in Portuguese and Brazilian studies appears to remain true and unchanged. Thirty years later, advancing on the same critical path, this article searches for biographical and literary evidence that might join, or naturally impose a distance between the poetics of the author of Quadrada (1967) and the author of Quaderna (1960).