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Fernando Pessoa is one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
Until some years ago known in the English-speaking world only among
a minority of connaisseurs, his work is finally becoming available
in English translations, and more are in the process of reaching
the literary public. Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa was only
forty-seven when he died, but he left behind a staggering number of
unpublished manuscripts that are still being screened and brought
to light. George Steiner heralded the day Pessoa discovered his
major Portuguese heteronyms, for no country had ever seen the birth
of four great poets in a single day. That was a reference to the
personae Pessoa created, the famous heteronyms Alberto Caeiro,
Alvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis, besides the man himself -- all
poets in their own right with their biographies and even critical
exchanges among themselves. Today well over a hundred Pessoa
heteronyms are known, including, notably, the semi-heteronym
Bernardo Soares, author of The Book of Disquiet, presently
available in two English translations. Lately, another Pessoa is
emerging -- an English writer, as well as a thinker. Indeed, having
been educated in Durban, South Africa, where his stepfather was the
consul of Portugal, the poet had a strong English education that
shaped his life and thought. George Monteiro has been in the
forefront of the uncovering of this side of Pessoa. Author, among
many other works, of The Presence of Pessoa: English, American, and
Southern African Literary Responses, and Fernando Pessoa and
Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, in this volume
Monteiro continues to explore and interpret the world of Pessoa to
English-speaking readers.
There's No Word for Saudade contains twenty-one essays aimed at a
readership interested in cultural and historical materials,
including those related to Portuguese America. Significant figures
covered include John Dos Passos, Charles Reis Felix, Julian Silva,
John Philip Sousa, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, James Merrill, and
the Azorean John Francis, businessman, patron, and friend to the
fabled Provincetown Players. Concluding essays scrutinize and judge
the phenomenon of the Portuguese movie in the 1930s and 1940s, and
trace the history of the tricky but persistently present Portuguese
concept of saudade.
Caldo Verde Is Not Stone Soup identifies elements of an emerging
Portuguese American culture in the United States. The book
discusses subjects and themes that reflect the richness and
diversity of this culture. Included are analyses of the Portuguese
fondness for nicknames over surnames, pejorative terms ("portugee,"
"Gee"), beau ideal heroes (John Philip Sousa, John Dos Passos, and
Peter Francisco), now forgotten early emigrants, foreign visitors
to the Azores (Samuel Longfellow and Thomas Wentworth Higginson),
proverbs from the oral and literary traditions, the Portuguese
sailor on American ships, and the saga of English As She Is Spoke,
a serious-minded textbook that became a comic phenomenon.
Ernest Hemingway revolutionized the American short story,
establishing himself as a master of realist fiction in the
tradition of Guy de Mauppasant. Yet none of Hemingway's many
emulators has succeeded in duplicating his understated, minimalist
style. In his Iceberg Theory of fiction, only the tip of the story
is seen on the surface - the rest remains submerged out of sight.
This study surveys the scope of Hemingway's mastery of the short
story form, enabling a fuller understanding of such works as
""Indian Camp,"" ""Big Two-Hearted River,"" ""The Killers,"" ""The
Mother of a Queen,"" ""In Another Country,"" ""Hills Like White
Elephants,"" ""The Snows of Kilimanjaro,"" and ""The Mercenaries,""
among many others. All 13 stories from his underrated Winner Take
Nothing collection are evaluated in detail.
Reading Henry James, looks to allusions, sources, echoes and
affinities in the author's vast body of work as critical ways to
discover and interpret his artistic purposes and literary
intentions. It ranges over the vast corpus of his fiction,
including stories, novelas and novels published in the leading
journals of the day on both sides of the Atlantic. The
considerations in individual chapters range from close analysis of
Daisy Miller, The American, The Beast in the Jungle and The Wings
of the Dove to James's creative fascinaton with the very successful
literary career as well as the everyday life of the social animal
who was the poet Robert Browning to James's complex but productive
relationship with his cambridge friends Marian ""Clover"" Adams and
her husband, the historian and autobiographer Henry Adams.
Longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation Born on the
island of Flores, between Europe and the United States, Pedro da
Silveira captures the islander's longing for migratory movement,
leading to departure and an inevitable return. These fresh and
original poems, now available in this masterful translation,
express a deep connection to place, particularly, the insular world
of the mid Atlantic islands of the Azores. In Poems in Absentia
& Poems from The Island and the World, we find yearning, hope,
and loss in equal measure. In plain and direct language, we
experience the emotions of dreaming and diminution as well as the
discovery of illusions. Behind the poet's searing irony, we
recognize a capacious and adventurous spirit.
"Wise old Virgil says in one of his Georgics, 'Praise large farms,
stick to small ones,'" Robert Frost told a friend. "Twenty acres
are just about enough." Frost started out as a school teacher
living the rural life of a would-be farmer, and later turned to
farming full time when he bought a place of his own. After a
sojourn in England where his first two books--A Boy's Will and
North of Boston--were published to critical acclaim, he returned to
New England, acquired a new farm and became a rustic for much of
the rest of his life. Frost claimed that all of his poetry was farm
poetry. His deep admiration for Virgil's Georgics, or poems of
rural life, inspired the creation of his own New England
"georgics." This body of work can be seen as his answer to the
haughty 20th-century modernism that seemed certain to define the
future of Western poetry. Like the "West-Running Brook" in his poem
of the same name, Frost's poetry can be seen as an embodiment of
contrariness.
Eighteen short essays by the most distinguished international
scholars examine Pessoa's influences, his dialogues with other
writers and artistic movements, and the responses his work has
generated worldwide. Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa claimed that
he did not evolve, but rather travelled. This book provides a state
of the art panorama of Pessoa's literary travels, particularly in
the English-speaking world. Its eighteen short, jargon-free essays
were written by the most distinguished Pessoa scholars across the
globe. They explore the influence on Pessoa's thinking of such
writers as Whitman and Shakespeare, as well as his creative
dialogues with figuresranging from decadent poets to the dark
magician Aleister Crowley, and, finally, some of the ways in which
he in turn has influenced others. They examine many different
aspects of Pessoa's work, ranging from the poetry of the heteronyms
to the haunting prose of The Book of Disquiet, from esoteric
writings to personal letters, from reading notes to unpublished
texts. Fernando Pessoa's Modernity Without Frontiers is a valuable
introduction to this multifaceted modern master, intended for both
students of modern literature and general readers interested in one
of its major figures.
"A poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever
written." So said Robert Frost in instructing readers on how to
achieve poetic literacy. George Monteiro's newest book follows that
dictum to enhance our understanding of Frost's most valuable poems
by demonstrating the ways in which they circulate among the
constellations of great poems and essays of the New England
Renaissance. Monteiro reads Frost's own poetry not against "all the
other poems ever written" but in the light of poems and essays by
his precursors, particularly Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson.
Familiar poems such as "Mending Wall," "After Apple-Picking,"
"Birches," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Road Not
Taken," and "Mowing," as well as lesser known poems such as "The
Draft Horse," "The Ax-Helve," "The Bonfire," "Dust of Snow," "A
Cabin in the Clearing," "The Cocoon," and "Pod of the Milkweed,"
are renewed by fresh and original readings that show why and how
these poems pay tribute to their distinguished sources. Frost's
insistence that Emerson and Thoreau were the giants of
nineteenth-century American letters is confirmed by the many poems,
variously influenced, that derive from them. His attitude toward
Emily Dickinson, however, was more complex and sometimes less
generous. In his twenties he molded his poetry after hers. But
later, after he joined the faculty of Amherst College, he found her
to be less a benefactor than a competitor. Monteiro tells a
two-stranded tale of attraction, imitation, and homage countered by
competition, denigration, and grudging acceptance of Dickinson's
greatness as a woman poet. In a daring move, he composes -- out of
Frost's own words and phrases -- the talk on Emily Dickinson that
Frost was never invited to give. In showing how Frost's work
converses with that of his predecessors, Monteiro gives us a new
Frost whose poetry is seen as the culmination of an intensely felt
New England literary experience.
Fernando Pessoa (1888--1935) is perhaps the most engaging of the
great Western modernists of this century. Born in Portugal but
raised and educated in southern Africa, Pessoa wrote poetry,
fiction, and nonfiction.
George Monteiro provides refreshingly new interpretations of
Pessoa's Mensagem (Message) and the modernist novella 0 Banqueiro
Anarquista (The Anarchist Banker). But he is primarily interested
in tracing Pessoa's influence on a wide range of contemporary
writers.
Among those Monteiro finds putting Pessoa's work to their own
surprising-and sometimes comic-uses are Joyce Carol Oates, Allen
Ginsberg, John Wain, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and earlier poets
including Thomas Merton, Edouard Roditi, and Roy Campbell. In
addition, the complete text of Campbell's pioneering biocritical
study of Pessoa is published here for the first time.
Fernando Pessoa is one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
Until some years ago known in the English-speaking world only among
a minority of connaisseurs, his work is finally becoming available
in English translations, and more are in the process of reaching
the literary public. Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa was only
forty-seven when he died, but he left behind a staggering number of
unpublished manuscripts that are still being screened and brought
to light. George Steiner heralded the day Pessoa discovered his
major Portuguese heteronyms, for no country had ever seen the birth
of four great poets in a single day. That was a reference to the
personae Pessoa created, the famous heteronyms Alberto Caeiro,
Alvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis, besides the man himselfall
poets in their own right with their biographies and even critical
exchanges among themselves. Today well over a hundred Pessoa
heteronyms are known, including, notably, the semi-heteronym
Bernardo Soares, author of The Book of Disquiet, presently
available in two English translations. Lately, another Pessoa is
emergingan English writer, as well as a thinker. Indeed, having
been educated in Durban, South Africa, where his stepfather was the
consul of Portugal, the poet had a strong English education that
shaped his life and thought. George Monteiro has been in the
forefront of the uncovering of this side of Pessoa. Author, among
many other works, of The Presence of Pessoa: English, American, and
Southern African Literary Responses, and Fernando Pessoa and
Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, in this volume
Monteiro continues to explore and interpret the world of Pessoa to
English-speaking readers.
This book brings together almost all of the known interviews
Elizabeth Bishop gave over a period of thirty years. Included also
are a few selected pieces based on conversations with her. All
together they allow her ardent and admiring readers a rewarding,
close-up encounter with one of America's great writers.
In this collection of conversations Bishop expresses her
opinions about various types of poetry, describes her view of the
geography of the imagination in the writing process, defends her
often criticized feminist views, and discusses her role as teacher
and poet.
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) won many prizes for poetry,
including a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. She was
graduated from Vassar, where she knew Mary McCarthy. She taught at
Harvard, New York University, and the University of Washington and
was a long-time resident in Brazil.
Of the great epic poets in the Western tradition, Luis Vaz de
Camoes (c. 1524-1580) remains perhaps the least known outside his
native Portugal, and his influence on literature in English has not
been fully recognized. In this major work of comparative
scholarship, George Monteiro thus breaks new ground. Combining
textual analysis with cultural investigation, he focuses on
English-language writers whose vision and expression have been
sharpened by their varied responses to Camoes. Introduced to
English readers in 1655, Camoes's work from the beginning appealed
strongly to writers. His Os Lustadas so affected William Hayley's
theory of the epic that he commissioned William Blake to paint
Camoes's portrait and advised poet Joel Barlow to recast his New
World epic along Camonean lines. Robert Southey's disappointment
with Lord Strangford's translation of Camoes encouraged him to try
his own versions. And the young Elizabeth Barrett's Camonean poems
inspired Edgar Allan Poe to appropriate elements from the same
source. Herman Melville's reading of Camoes bore fruit in his
career-long borrowings from the Portuguese poet. Longfellow, T. W.
Higginson, and Emily Dickinson read and championed Camoes. And
Camoes as epicist and love poet is an eminence grise in several of
Elizabeth Bishop's strongest Brazilian poems. Southern African
writers have interpreted and reinterpreted Adamastor, Camoes's
Spirit of the Cape, as a symbol of a dangerous and mysterious
Africa and an emblem of European imperialism.
The life and career of American poet and writer Elizabeth Bishop
falls into two distinct segments: the pre-Brazil years and the
Brazil years and beyond. A creature of displacement from childhood,
Bishop traveled to Brazil at the age of 40 for a two-week trip and
unexpectedly stayed for most of the next two decades, a sojourn
that marked her work indelibly. This study explores how Bishop's
personal and literary experience in Brazil influenced her work
culturally, historically, and linguistically, while she was in
Brazil and following her return to the United States. Focusing on
the ""Brazilian"" characteristics of Bishop's work as well as some
of the major poems she composed before settling in Brazil, this
volume offers fresh perspective on one of the 20th century's most
celebrated writers.
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