Vida imaginada, vida a imaginar. convite ao colóquio

Abstract

In moments of crisis, colloquies are timely for debating what shall be done, as George Seferis has suggested. The discussion of poetics is also facing in contemporary Brazil the challenge of rethinking its place in society. The “pressure of reality” requires the resistance of the imagination, according to Wallace Stevens. It may be opportune to question well-established academic practices. The reading of poetry may be a way of reopening the contact with the sphere of the public, which is the right place for fighting obscurantism. The Socratic ideal of “life examined” and Matthew Arnold’s proposition of poetry as “criticism of life” deserve reconsideration. Jorge de Sena has searched for a nonnormative way of doing so. The conversation about poetics takes sides with imagination against despair.