What's in a Name

With the elliptical looping of a butterfly alighting on one's sleeve, the poems of Ana Lui¿sa Amaral arrive as small hypnotic miracles. Spare and beautiful in a way reminiscent both of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson (it comes as no surprise that Amaral is the leading Portuguese translator of Dickinson), these poems-in Margaret Jull Costa's gorgeous English versions-seamlessly interweave the everyday with the dreamlike and ask "What's in a name?"
"How solid is a name if answered to," Amaral answers, but "like the Rose-no, like its perfume: ungovernable. Free." There is much freedom within Amaral's poetry, room for mysteries to multiply, and yet her beautiful lines are as clear as water:
 
And that time of smiles Which does, incidentally,
 
really exist, I swear, as does the fire
And the invisible sea, which with nothing will agree