Selected Poems

Widely accepted as the greatest of the Brazilian Modernist poets, Manuel Bandeira (1886-1968) spent most of his life suffering from tuberculosis. It has been said "his poetry spits blood" and yet he is a poet of wit and humor. Bandeira's poetry wanders through Brazil's hidden life, beauty and language, through the slums of Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon, European and Brazilian civilization. He convalesced at the sanitarium Thomas Mann described where his fellow patient was Paul Luard. Readers may see a certain brotherhood between these two great poets. Bandeira's gifts as a poet and his humanity were much appreciated by Elizabeth Bishop. There is something of the carnival in Bandeira's poetry, a wild celebration that precedes and perhaps precluded the Passion. He is a poet of revelation, mystery and strangely ironic humor. This volume has been translated brilliantly by David Slavitt, who has translated more than forty books. His translations from the Greek include the Metamorphoses of Ovid, The Fables of Avianus, the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, and Seneca: The Tragedies, Vols. 1 and 2.