The Discomfort of Time in Joao Cabral de Melo Neto

This article discusses the reflection on time involved in Joao Cabral de Melo Neto's poetic project. Considering some of author's theorical ideas, the article proposes an analysis of his work, emphasizing changes in the struggle between the mineral immobility of his poetics and the transformative effects of the passage of time. While it is true that constructive rationality aspires to an absolutely stable form in which would be fora do tempo ["out of time"] in poems as "Pequena ode mineral", this article pretends prove that, in other instances, Cabral's poetry seems enquire internally this stability, testing its own aesthetical postulates.