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Everything changed when I crossed the border from Bolivia to Brazil, innovation or as the Brazilians call it "jeitinho" was everywhere, and the faces and language was different, a breath of fresh air. Every Brazilian city is unique and uniquely Brazilian whether the people are the descendents of slaves, immigrants or native peoples, they are all Brazilian. I crossed the border into Brazil in 1995 at Corumbá, in the Brazilian Pantanal. The change was immediate, like when you cross from the US into Mexico, or from Hong Kong into China, or from Spain to Morocco, not just a new nation, but a new culture and a new history. The first thing I saw when I entered Brazil was a billboard, 'Brasil, a capital da Antártica', Brazil, the capital of Antarctica, then I realized that Antarctica was a beer but Brazil was distinctly a nation of the south. I finally made it to São Paulo, Rio and Bahia, and then to Curitiba and Porto Alegre and later I lived in Blumenau in Santa Catarina state and came to respect Brazil a great force.

Brazil's language has absorbed many other tongues and many other ways of creating language, and this has resulted in a rich new language filled with echoes of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Yoruba, Angolan, German, Polish, Japanese, and Yiddish, a similar combination to our American language but the mix came out differently and terribly interesting. Brazil is an island of Portuguese speakers in our American sea of Spanish speakers; in our Hemisphere there are 450 Million Spanish speakers, 350 Million English speakers, and 200 Million Portuguese speakers. Most of this centuries' greatest American poets do not write in English, and from Brazil there are many like Leminski, Drummond de Andrade, Cecília Meireles and many more who are not well known in the USA and should be.

To American poets writing in Spanish, English or French Brazil is at first familiar, a big nation of big ideas, a nation founded on Slavery and idealism. A nation where the law breaker and the rebel is idolized. Brazil is also a nation of contradictions. I do not know how many times I heard, "America is a racist nation, Brazil has moved beyond race", from a room full of white faced Brazilians. It is true that Brazil is far more open and less racist than the USA or Spanish Latin America, but in a nation that has hundreds of words for skin color it is always an issue. Poverty too is an issue as is literacy. It was estimated by the United Nations that 200 Million Brazilians buy fewer books than the 10 Million people who live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These are struggles for a nation that is aspiring to be a world power of peace but in its uniqueness Brazil is a global work of art.

Brazil in the end is the nation that Americans and Latin American poets need to know, in many ways it is our reflection; our opposite, and of all the nations of the world, Brazilians and Americans have the most in common, poetically and in many other ways. Two nations formed by their geography, mixness, and their isolation from the rest of the world.