The Poetry of Fernando Pessoa

Before Fernando Pessoa became known as the great modern poet of Portugal, he wrote in English, the language of his schooling in Durban, and this gathering collects that early verse. Its centerpiece is the 35 Sonnets, published in 1918, dense Shakespearean poems that turn a Renaissance form toward a distinctly modern doubt about knowledge, identity, and the gap between thought and speech. The lines are knotted and metaphysical, worrying at whether we can ever truly know ourselves or reach another mind. Readers who know Pessoa through his Portuguese heteronyms will recognize the same restless, fractured self at work here in a stranger key. This free PDF and EPUB edition presents his English poetry for readers new and returning.