Education by Windows
Johnny Lorenz
Original poems | Translations of Mario Quintana
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In Education by Windows, Johnny Lorenz allows a fleeting world to seep in, recognizable if not quite intact. His poems are touched with an aphoristic grace and complemented by his translations, presented here in bilingual format, of the Brazilian poet Mario Quintana, who wrote that “every poem is, to me, an amplified interjection.” Meditative and urbane, the two poets together are a paean to the force of simplicity and brazen sincerity.
Sandwich Series #2
Publication date: 7/15/2018
ISBN: 978-0-9990737-2-8
Price: $18
“Carefully chiseled without being tentative, lovely without going soft, Johnny Lorenz’s poems capture the breathless rituals of daily living in quiet, transformative images and numinous bursts of wonder. And his translations allow Quintana’s playful clarity to shine, displaying a light hand and a subtle attentiveness to music.”
—Ellen Doré Watson
“Mario Quintana´s poetry is a rare combination of lyricism and wit. His simplicity of style belies a wonderful inventiveness of mind.”
—Luis Fernando Verissimo
JOHNNY LORENZ, son of Brazilian immigrants to the United States, was born in 1972. He received his doctorate in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, and he is an associate professor at Montclair State University. His poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Quiddity, Rattapallax and the anthology Luso-American Literature, and he has published articles on Brazilian literature in journals such as Luso-Brazilian Review and Modern Fiction Studies. He has translated writers such as Clarice Lispector, Marcelino Freire, Julián Fuks, Simões Lopes Neto and Cristovão Tezza. In 2003, he was awarded a Fulbright grant to translate the poems of Mário Quintana. In 2013, he was a finalist for Best Translated Book for his translation of A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector (New Directions).
MARIO QUINTANA was born in 1906 in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil. He passed away in 1994. Author of more than twenty volumes of poetry and a regular newspaper contributor, Quintana was—and continues to be—one of the most beloved poets of Brazil. His volumes include A Rua dos Cataventos (1940), Espelho Mágico (1951), Caderno H (1973) and 80 Anos de Poesia (1986). In 1980, Quintana was awarded the Prêmio Machado de Assis from the Brazilian Academy of Letters.