Woman poetry

betrayal and modernist tradition in Assionara Souza

Abstract

This study focuses on the poetry of Paraná state writer Assionara Souza (1969-2018). Although the author has two published books of poems, one of which is posthumous, the writer’s preference was to present her work in cyberspace, using various platforms, such as her personal blog Cecília não é um cachimbo (Cecília is not a pipe) and her personal Facebook page. We selected the poems “Drummond em tempos sinistros” (2015), “Bandeira” (2016), “Misael, seu desgraçado” (2017a), and “Penélope” (2017b) from these cyberspaces for the analysis in this article, whose goal is to inspect the relation established with the Brazilian modernist tradition, which sometimes presents itself as a betrayal, sometimes as an emotional issue, but most importantly brings a new composition of female characters in literature, which were produced by men and now reconstructed by Assionara. To develop such questions, we take the discussions proposed by Octavio Paz (1984) and Luciana Di Leone (2014) regarding the role of tradition and affection; Diana Klinger (2014) and the notion of ethics in affection; Rita Lenira de Freitas Bittencourt (2017, 2020) and Tamara Kamenszain (2015) on the role of the female figure. In short, the poet Assionara Souza establishes a dialogue with the tradition, betraying it when she inserts a woman’s view and perspective.