Multitudinous Heart: Selected Poems
Subtitle: A Bilingual Edition
By: Carlos Drummond de Andrade ; translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith
Contributors: Zenith, Richard, translator; Andrade, Carlos Drummond de, 1902-1987; Andrade, Carlos Drummond de, 1902-1987
Edition: First edition, bilingual edition.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng; por
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 394
ISBN-13: 9780374535490; 9780374280703
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: Translations into English; Brazilian poetry
Work titles: Poems
Description: "The most indispensable poems of Brazil's greatest poet Brazil, according to no less an observer than Elizabeth Bishop, is a place where poets hold a place of honor. "Among men, the name of 'poet' is sometimes used as a compliment or term of affection, even if the person referred to is not a poet at all. One of the most famous twentieth-century poets, Manuel Bandeira, was presented with a permanent parking space in front of his apartment house in Rio de Janeiro, with an enamelled sign POETA--although he never owned a car and didn't know how to drive." In a culture like this, it is difficult to underestimate the importance of the nation's greatest poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Drummond, the most emblematic Brazilian poet, was a master of transforming the ordinary world, through language, into the sublime. His poems--musical protests, twisted hymns, dissonant celebrations of imperfection--are transcriptions of life itself recorded by a magnanimous outcast. As he put it in his "Seven-Sided Poem": "When I was born, one of those twisted / angels who live in the shadows said: / 'Carlos, get ready to be a misfit in life!'. World so wide, world so large, / my heart's even larger." Multitudinous Heart, the most generous selection of Drummond's poems available in English, gathers work from the various phases of this restless, brilliant modernist. Richard Zenith's selection and translation brings us a more vivid and surprising poet than we knew"--

"A selection of the finest poems from the preeminent Brazilian poet of the twentieth century"--
Notes: Translated from Portuguese.

Includes selections from Alguma poesia--o livro em seu tempo, Brejo das almas, Sentimento do mundo, José, A rosa do povo, Novos poemas, Claro enigma, Fazendeiro do ar, A vida passada a limpo, Lição de coisas, A falta que ama, As impurezas do branco, Boitempo, Corpo, Farewell.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-380) and index.

Text in English and Portuguese.
Table of contents: title: Some poetry (1930); title: Swamp of souls (1934); title: Feeling of the world (1940); title: José (1942); title: Rose of the people (1945); title: New poems (1948); title: Clear enigma (1951); title: Farmer in the clouds (1954); title: Fair copy of life (1959); title: Lesson of things (1962); title: The loving absence (1968); title: Impurities of white (1973); title: Oxtime (three volumes, 1968/1973/1979); title: Body (1984); title: Farewell (1987; first published in 1996).