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?"