The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation
Isabel Sobral Campos
The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation is a book-length poem-memoir reflecting on Portuguese colonization of African countries and its place within the imperial and colonial forces that have shaped global history for the past 500 years. Drawing on the writings of Amílcar Cabral and others, as well as interviews with family members about life under Salazar's dictatorship, it weaves together scholarly sources, familial narratives, and memories, exploring nationalistic myths, Portugal's violent colonial history, and the author's experiences growing up in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution.
Praise for The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation
Isabel Sobral Campos in her latest work in The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation deftly scripts the dawn of Portuguese colonial endeavor in Africa. By means of transparent carbon tentacles she kinetically balances lines that hover above inscriptions such as "splotches tiller light by quiet magnification" not as some punctuated Utopian scrawling but alive with a quiescent vigor that brews by endemic balance.
— Will Alexander
This book bears deep look's all but immediate immersion in deep song. All, but. Not delay, but dawning of withdrawal as song pulls out, but not away, into its other histories. Song can't get away when you're in it, drawn with it, deeper into bloom, which is bouquet—dianthic, panthemic, agronomic, revolutionary. There, says Amílcar Cabral, the people are the mountains, "breaking / the physical well of internment," digging vision's sound and upper regress, showing how to fight in love. With love, Isabel resounds their resolution.
— Fred Moten
Unapologetically raw and generously reflective, this work is both a confrontation and a reckoning. Multiple genres—memoir, poetry, essay, polemic, footnotes—are woven so as to transform historical wounds into moments of startling beauty. All of this is held by the metaphor of the optogram: the alleged final image captured on the retina at the moment of death.
— Juliana Spahr
Working with the fugacious genre of memory, like a retinal image captured at the moment of death—particularly of a guillotined or tortured victim—The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation offers a masterful examination of recollection. Isabel Sobral Campos incisively scalps Portugal's quincentenary colonial history with remarkable "ocular transparency" and linguistic precision. She aims through dense, pithy, noetic language to break away from the "capitalist spectrum of sameness." It is an intelligent, precise work—less imperialistic than a poet, yet more exacting than a surgeon.
— Vi Khi Nao
About the Author
Isabel Sobral Campos is the author of The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation, selected for the Futurepoem 2023 Other Futures Award, as well as two other full-length poetry manuscripts. She has published several chapbooks, and her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Black Sun Lit, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her poems have also been included in the anthologies BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World. In 2024, her collaborative translation of Salette Tavares's LEX ICON was published by Ugly Duckling Presse. She co-founded and edits Sputnik & Fizzle Press with her sister and lives in Cambridge, MA.
The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation is a book-length poem-memoir reflecting on Portuguese colonization of African countries and its place within the imperial and colonial forces that have shaped global history for the past 500 years. Drawing on the writings of Amílcar Cabral and others, as well as interviews with family members about life under Salazar's dictatorship, it weaves together scholarly sources, familial narratives, and memories, exploring nationalistic myths, Portugal's violent colonial history, and the author's experiences growing up in the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution.
Praise for The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation
Isabel Sobral Campos in her latest work in The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation deftly scripts the dawn of Portuguese colonial endeavor in Africa. By means of transparent carbon tentacles she kinetically balances lines that hover above inscriptions such as "splotches tiller light by quiet magnification" not as some punctuated Utopian scrawling but alive with a quiescent vigor that brews by endemic balance.
— Will Alexander
This book bears deep look's all but immediate immersion in deep song. All, but. Not delay, but dawning of withdrawal as song pulls out, but not away, into its other histories. Song can't get away when you're in it, drawn with it, deeper into bloom, which is bouquet—dianthic, panthemic, agronomic, revolutionary. There, says Amílcar Cabral, the people are the mountains, "breaking / the physical well of internment," digging vision's sound and upper regress, showing how to fight in love. With love, Isabel resounds their resolution.
— Fred Moten
Unapologetically raw and generously reflective, this work is both a confrontation and a reckoning. Multiple genres—memoir, poetry, essay, polemic, footnotes—are woven so as to transform historical wounds into moments of startling beauty. All of this is held by the metaphor of the optogram: the alleged final image captured on the retina at the moment of death.
— Juliana Spahr
Working with the fugacious genre of memory, like a retinal image captured at the moment of death—particularly of a guillotined or tortured victim—The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation offers a masterful examination of recollection. Isabel Sobral Campos incisively scalps Portugal's quincentenary colonial history with remarkable "ocular transparency" and linguistic precision. She aims through dense, pithy, noetic language to break away from the "capitalist spectrum of sameness." It is an intelligent, precise work—less imperialistic than a poet, yet more exacting than a surgeon.
— Vi Khi Nao
About the Author
Isabel Sobral Campos is the author of The Optogram of the Mind Is a Carnation, selected for the Futurepoem 2023 Other Futures Award, as well as two other full-length poetry manuscripts. She has published several chapbooks, and her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Black Sun Lit, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her poems have also been included in the anthologies BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World. In 2024, her collaborative translation of Salette Tavares's LEX ICON was published by Ugly Duckling Presse. She co-founded and edits Sputnik & Fizzle Press with her sister and lives in Cambridge, MA.