Education by Stone : Selected Poems

"Joao Cabral de Melo Neto is one of Brazil's most acclaimed poets . . . From his early days, Mr. Cabral has written poems that are marked by a captivating use of simple language."--"New York Times Book Review"Disdaining personal revelation and sentimental vision, the poems of Joao Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999) present squalor, desperation and injustice without comment or obvious compassion. Other poems pay homage to such subjects as chewing gum and aspirin. What interests Cabral, as he remarked in his acceptance speech for the 1992 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, is "the exploration of the materiality of words," the "rigorous construction of . . . lucid objects of language." His poetry, hard as stone and light as air, is like no other. Imagine making poems the way an architect designs buildings or an engineer builds bridges. Such was the ambition of João Cabral de Melo Neto. Though a great admirer of the thing-rich poetries of Francis Ponge and of Marianne Moore, what interested him even more, as he remarked in his acceptance speech for the 1992 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, was "the exploration of the materiality of words," the "rigorous construction of (. . .) lucid objects of language." His poetry, hard as stone and light as air, is like no other. Perhaps the single most important Brazilian poet of the 20th century. Same vein as Wallace Stevens and James Merrill