SIGNS OF INTERCOURSE: MATERIAL POETRY AND EROTIC IMPERATIVES

Abstract

Rich implementations of expressive alterities within the domain of eroticism and sexuality occur in contemporary experimental poetries in Brazil, including poesia concreta, poema processo, criação intersemiótica or intersignos, and the catch-all name, poesia visual. The designation material poetry emphasizes the clearly pertinent physical qualities of language in this thematic domain and alludes to a noted title in related cultural studies, The Material Queer, which uses the modifier in a sense grounded in historical or dialectical materialism yet also offers the prospect of intriguing connections to non-normative lyrico-graphic texts with respect to identity consciousness. An embodied otherness of factitiousness on the semotic plane may be an apt partner for portraying or performing proscribed, unconventional, or non-mainstream practices: public affection, prostitution, group sex, inter-ethnic union, sodomy, homoeroticism, bisexuality, cross-dressing, fetishes, or other. In Brazilian lyric from 1950 to the present there are select moments that achieve such a confluence of interest, illustrating novelty in the trajectory of poetry as well as diversity or positioning in matters of sexuality.