Multitudinous Heart

Starred review from June 15, 2015
One of Brazil’s most important poets, the wry, dry, self-deprecating Drummond (1902–1987), claims a respectable American following, and this large, bilingual collection, ably introduced by veteran translator Zenith, should see that reputation expand further. The early poems, puzzle-like and spare, that made Drummond’s name (“I will never forget that in the middle of the road/ there was a stone”) serve to introduce his friendlier narratives and parables, particularly the long, affectionate, imaginary family reunion entitled “The Table,” or an extended comparison of poetry to a stuffed elephant, “ready to go out and look/ for friends in a jaded/ world that doesn’t believe/ any more in animals.” Readers who make it through Drummond’s weaker, more abstract verse of the 1960s and ’70s will be rewarded with the sharp recollections of “Oxtime,” which describes the poet’s mining-town childhood. They will also discover a deliberate, sad poetry of old age. Zenith duplicates the pace, if not the meters, of Drummond’s seven-syllable lines and makes careful English from the Portuguese of his free verse: the poet who emerges has one eye on his big country, but he attends first and last to an exemplary “tiny, quiet, indifferent/ solitary life.”

June 1, 2015
The quality of a poet can be determined, in part, by the writers who take the time to translate her or him. Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Strand, Gregory Rabassa, and many others have brought the Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade (190287) to readers of English. Now Richard Zenith presents a generous selection of translations from Drummond's entire oeuvre, with the original Portuguese en face. Drummond was born in Itabira, a provincial town best known for its iron mines. After earning a pharmacology degree, he lived in cosmopolitan Rio, but his early life in the provinces left an indelible mark on his poetry. Prolific, briefly a Communist, he is the rare poet who can mention love, suffering, or both in almost every poem without sounding adolescent or false. The shortest poem in the book is Porcelain The shards of life, glued together, form a strange teacup. // Unused, / it quietly observes us from the sideboard. Drummond is a major poet. This volume is most welcome.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)