Maria Teresa Horta, one of the famous three marias of the "New Portuguese letters", wrote this compendium of poems, whose impact was so powerful that it bothered the power of the New State.
It is a small book of poems published at the end of 1969, which despite its editorial success, its content was condemned to obscurity by the political police, the ill-fated PIDE, which ordered to seize all the existing copies at the national level, in all the country's bookstores. Back then, the undersecretary of the State of the Presidency of the Council led by Marcelo Caetano, César Moreira Baptista, went so far as to threaten the owner of the publishing house, Snu Abecassis, with the closure of Don Quixote if she published any other work by Maria Teresa Horta. But what was so dangerous, subversive or even threatening to fascism in "My Lady of Me"? The author herself clarifies in an interview that is part of the book "New Portuguese letters: between Portugal and the world", "I wanted to write a direct book, without euphemisms, that spoke of the sexual pleasure of women." The poetess also recalls that "because of that I was imprisoned for 24 hours. The walls of my house were marked with offensive words and I received phone calls and anonymous letters containing threats". Maria Teresa Horta, and I emphasize the only, only committed the supreme crime of approaching female sexuality without modesty or embarrassment. If we read some of these poems, under the auspices of the modern age, they seem harmless, but if we travel back in time, to a closed Portugal in itself, where women's rights were extremely limited, was a breath of fresh air that offended the defenders of the order, the morality and the good customs of the Portuguese society. Heck, with this sentence I even look like one of the characters of Herman José, the canon Remédios, remember what he would say? There was no need! But, after all there was a need and a lot, of reading words loaded with eroticism and sensuality, and for this very reason I strongly advise the reading of this book of poems, but I could have talked about the work of the three marias, instead I felt like I could arouse the provocation. But, I promise that next year there will be three more. Happy reading.
