Education by stone

Early work: while there is much emphasis on dreams, (perhaps easy?) surrealist imagery, and (overly?) romantic metapoetic anxieties about the act of writing poetry, beginning with The Dog Without Feathers (1950) the work is extraordinary--circular, repetition accrues with violence, much obsessed with death. In the late work, cane sugar takes on special figurative meaning, and Ponge feels like an influence in the work from the 1960s. Zenith's (as usual) brilliant translation offers a beautiful postmodern chilliness to the work that feels unusual for Portuguese-language poetry of the same period--a discursive quality that contrasts with the earthiness of the poet and reminds me of the translation choices of Eshleman with Cesaire or Joris show more with Celan. show less