ABSTRACT
The poet and environmentalist Nicolas Behr was born in Cuiaba in 1958 and resides in Brasilia, which he has made his home since 1974. This chapter offers neologism of "brasiliensidade" to refer to both the "brasilidade" factor of what constitutes Brasília's character, as a capital, as a planned city, as a peculiar and particular urban space, while simultaneously alluding to the densidade, or the thickness or complexity, involved in the poet's project of reinvention. A prolific poet, Behr has produced dozens of books, both mimeographed and published by mainstream presses throughout Brazil. Ironically and quite effectively, then, loaded terms of Brazilian bureaucracy and even legales and juridiques return in Behr's poetry as colloquial expressions of everyday existence. A specific interest in Behr is fueled by both an aesthetic and a socio-political preoccupation of a number of irreconcilable contradictions abundant in the poet's verses, one that the poet himself has designated as "poesília de braxília".
