“A Box of Trash or an Archive”

Ambiguities in Cabral de Melo Neto’s Museum

Abstract

Abstract: The first poem of João Cabral de Melo Neto’s fourteenth book – “The museum of everything” (O museu de tudo, in the original) – presents itself as something prone to ambiguity. Ironically, the poetic persona places it on two opposite ends: it can be either a box of trash or an archive. The ambiguous aspect of this “presentation poem” permeates the set of 80 poems that integrates Museu de tudo (1975), a book that both its author and the specialized critic define as more prone to circumstantial poetry, although they also relate it to the exercise of critical poetry. Based on the tension suggested by the metaphor of De Melo Neto’s Museum as a space where aesthetic treasures and less valuable waste are kept, at the same time, this work aims at demonstrating how apparently disparate poetic principles – critical poetry and poems of circumstances – are assembled as the cornerstones of the Museu de tudo.

Keywords: Poetics of modernity; João Cabral de Melo Neto; Museum of everything; occasional verse; critical poetry.