“Tá pronto, Seu Lobo?” by Eloí Bocheco: Poetic Manifestations of Orality in Contemporary Poetry for Children

Abstract

Prominent studies in Brazilian children’s literature record the production of poems for children, which seeks material in the oral archive (Zilberman, 2005). That is, in the poetic forms of orality (Debus, 2006). In this field, Bocheco opens a highly creative space in which oral poetry and the written poem merge, as in “Tá pronto, Seu Lobo?” (2014) chosen for this study. Thus, the categories of poetry in the oral archive are initially presented following Melo (1981), Heylen (1991), and Cascudo (2006)—a basis that we expand with Andruetto (2017), Freud (2014), Colomer (2017), and Bordini (1991, 2003). It is concluded, in short, that the writer recovers the playful-poetic atmosphere that refers to childhood (when the repertoire of the playful reader was constituted), and also presently, in the poet who, in her writing, uses rhythmic structures, playful sound and suggestions of movement typical of nursery rhymes (parlendas). Eloí Bocheco offers to the modern reader elements of popular culture and orality through the written poem, which fulfills a double function because it does not deprive the poems of their original aura, but rather reinforces it.