Marcelo Gomes Dolabela Lajinha revisited, poetry and football ('dolabélicos' studies 1)

Abstract

This article analyzes the poem "Lajinha Revisited #17" by Marcelo Dolabela (1957-2020), an artist from the generation of Marginal Poetry, which depicts in the first six verses a boy sitting at the coffee table dreaming of becoming a football player. However, there is an abrupt change in the hero's destiny. This is the foundation for the text to address the social transformations experienced by the poet himself in the 1970s, including his move from Lajinha/MG, his hometown in the region of Serra do Caparaó, bordering with Espírito Santo, to the capital Belo Horizonte. To do so, we will mobilize references to some symbols of the municipality and the region, narratives of events from the poet's life with peculiarities from his biography, paratexts from his works, and, especially, analyses and comments on some of Dolabela's poems, highlighting the importance of the geographic and historical connection in the construction of his poetics – Lajinha and Belo Horizonte. After all, when one lives between two cultures, the individual does not fully integrate with either, living in a position of "marginality".