When Carmen Oleivira stands up and starts dancing to the samba, you can tell what she means by “the allure of the Brazilian woman.” The Brazilian novelist and biographer was at UMass Boston on Wednesday, October 29, to talk about her book, Rare and Commonplace Flowers. The book was translated from Portuguese by Neil K. Besner and contains a forward by Lloyd Schwartz (Troy Professor of English and Creative Writing at UMB).

The book is a biography of the relationship between the American poet Elizabeth Bishop and a high-born Brazilian woman, Lota de Macedo Soares. The women lived together in Brazil from 1951 to 1967.

Carmen Oliveira is a professor of Comparative Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is also a consultant on gender issues for the Woman’s Leadership Center in the same city. She is on a ten-day tour to talk about her book. Meticulously researched, Oliveira’s prose style, coupled with a fascinating story ensures an engrossing read.

And because the book takes place mostly in Brazil, a real feeling of Brazilian culture is imparted. The reader learns along with Bishop what it is to live in Brazil.

The love story is ultimately tragic, but touching and outstanding in it’s unusual circumstances for the times. The book caused a furor when it came out five years ago in Brazil.

In her soft-spoken voice, Oliveira sat and told the story of Elizabeth and Lota.

De Mercado Soares was the daughter of a viscount and educated in Europe. She was also a self-taught architect. When she met Bishop, she was building and living in an ultra-modern house she designed, isolated in the mountains of Brazil.

Bishop’s career was already in full bloom when she decided to continue her travels in Brazil. In her first week there she had an extreme allergic reaction to a cashew fruit she ate. To the audience’s amusement, Oliveira held up a wooden replica to show the difference between the apple-shaped fruit and the little nut hanging somewhat indecently from the bottom.

Bishop was in bed for weeks and de Mercado Soares took care of her at her mountain house, called Fern. By the time Bishop was well, she had decided to stay in Brazil.

Oleivira explains, “What detained Bishop in Brazil was an intoxication caused by a very sensuous tropical fruit, that is, in other words, a passion for an enticing Brazilian woman-Lota.”

Elizabeth Bishop was already famous in her time. She was the Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress the year before she went to Brazil. Today we call it Poet Laureate. What Oliveira found in her research was that Lota de Mercado Soares was an accomplished and fascinating woman in her own right.

Bishop had a studio where she could write. Some of her best work was written at the Fern house. Although she always looks gloomy in pictures, it was one of the few times in her life when she acknowledged being happy in letters to her friends.

She was learning about Brazilian culture, not just literature but the music. She loved the samba. She wrote from Seattle to her friend James Merrill, “Here I play the few samba records I brought with me, and samba about, all by myself.”

At this point in her talk Oleivira, hit play on the boom box sitting on the table next to her, and got up and danced. She moved with the music, making a very convincing argument for the allurement of Brazilian culture.

Much of Bishop’s writing lingers on themes of isolation and dislocation, but in the Fern house, she was centered. It took nine years for the house to be completed. De Mercado Soares next project was designing a giant park for Rio de Janeiro. The park was to be on the scale of Central Park in New York and took years of planning.

De Mercado Soares became more and more obsessed with the park, and decided to move to Rio to be closer to the process. Bishop hated Rio as much as she loved the mountains. Oliveira’s quiet voice starts to sound sad as she describes the disintegration of the relationship.

Bishop was drinking heavily and Lota was fighting for her vision of the park. Eventually she was stripped of all credit for her work because of petty politics. In 1967 Bishop returned to the US and took a teaching post at Harvard. While on a visit to Bishop that year, Lota de Mercado Soares killed herself.

Carmen Oliveira brought in some photographs of Brazil to help us see it as Bishop did. Bishop called Brazil a “mess, but a beautiful mess.” Oleivira showed us photos from Carnival with colors spiraling together.

Finally she held up a picture of two rivers in Brazil. Before getting to the ocean, they join together, but because of chemical reasons, the waters never mix. One river is a darker color, so the distinction is clear. This is how she described the long-term relationship between Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Mercado Soares.