Selected Poetry, 19371990

Cabral de Melo Neto is widely recognized as Brazil's most significant post-WWII poet. Influential in leading the ``generation of '45'' against exaggeration in the use of free verse, Cabral made his nation's poetry more precise, less sentimental. The early poems make a theatrical effort to let ``visible things speak'' through striking if dispassionate imagery. Later work develops themes of nature and specific if luckless national locales, consistently shying away from protest writing or folklore. Trained as a statistician, Cabral fashioned himself as a sort of technician of poetry, favoring rational forms and dynamic construction. Engineers, architects and surgeons figure prominently in his poems, as do artists like Mondrian and Klee. His anachronistic wish to make poetry ``with ruler and quadrant'' should be viewed in this light, alarming as it is. Cabral's lengthy career has attracted poet-translators such as W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, James Wright, Louis Simpson, Alastair Reid and Elizabeth Bishop, all of whom figure, generally ably, in this volume. (Jan.)