"The idea is to look at different writers and how they approach America not so much as a geography but as an idea, as a myth, as a kind of democratic promise."

- Johnny Lorenz

When English professor Johnny Lorenz applied for a Fulbright grant, there was no doubt in his mind what he would propose: to teach a literature course and conduct research on Brazilian poet Mario Quintana in Brazil. This research venture has special meaning to Lorenz not only because his family is from Brazil, but because it was his grandmother who introduced him to the poetry of Quintana. Although the poet is well known in Brazil, he is not familiar among American readers. Lorenz hopes to change that.

Working on his first Fulbright, Lorenz will spend July through December in the south of Brazil, teaching and immersing himself in Quintana's surroundings, and interviewing the people who knew him personally.

Lorenz took time from his preparations to talk about his upcoming trip.

Q: You must be pleased that the approved program will encompass all your interests.
A: Ever since I was in graduate school I imagined a time that I would be able to bring together my personal interest in being in the south of Brazil where I have family with some kind of professional project. I realized that no one here ever heard of Mario Quintana. When I looked at all the anthologies of Brazilian poetry that we have in translation, including our library here, for some reason he is never represented. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a project that would allow me to do something new and related to my interests and also to be close to my family. It all came together.

Q: What will you be teaching?
A: I'll be teaching a number of different courses at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), which translates to the University of the Valley of the River of Bells in a little town called Porto Alegre. It's a major university with one of the largest libraries in Latin America. The major undergraduate course will be American literature for advanced English students, conducted in English, titled, "A Literature of American Dreams." The idea is to look at different writers and how they approach America not so much as a geography but as an idea, as a myth, as a kind of democratic promise. We'll be looking at people like Alan Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silco, who have intergrated the idea of what America has meant and could mean.

Q: Tell us about your research project.
A: I will produce a book-length collection of translation of Mario Quintana's work and write an introductory essay that will include criticism of his work and explain why he's important and why he should receive more attention in North America.

Q: How big an undertaking is it?
A: I'm hoping that I'm not being too ambitious. Quinatana's earlier work is very formal with a lot of rhyme that is hard to reproduce in English. In translating the Portuguese to English, the challenge will be in capturing the rhyme and keeping the meaning, imagery and metaphor in tact. I've been struggling with strategies to do that. His later poems are brief, almost little flashes, meditative phrases, philosophical insights that are sometimes just one or two lines or fragments, and that seems easier to translate. But I keep returning to them because a lot of times they're colloquial. In translation, I often realize I can't possibly get the nuance so I have to try to borrow something from English that is close in spirit.

Q: You say you base your pedagogy on "a commitment to empower my students as readers and writers." Could you elaborate?
A: I try to get my students to go beyond the classroom, to think about their own language and how it is both the freedom and the limit of their imagination so they could always look to their own language as a way in which they can reinvent themselves and test the limits of who they are and who they want to be. As far as the study of literature, one of the dangers is that students feel the responsibility to explain a poem. Having done that, there's a sense of self-satisfaction that it's already explained so there's no reward in coming back to it and discovering something else. I think it's more productive to ask, "What is the poem suggesting to you?" This allows students more flexibility and freedom, but also more responsibility in coming up with something uniquely their own.

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