Customer Reviews

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

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There is Poetry great in its own language which does not translate. I know that Pushkin is for Russians the supreme Russian poet, but in translation the greatness is not felt. Goethe and Heine are supreme lyrical voices but do not translate their greatness into English. Borges on the other hand and Pessoa do translate. I sense this is because they are 'poet thinkers' who provide a kind of 'meaning' the reader can grapple with and struggle to interpret. They somehow tell us something that we can contend with in our own rewritings of their words in our readings.
In his outstanding introduction to this work the translator Richard Zenith provides us with a guide to the Pessoa alter egos, or as he called them 'heteronyms'. He also tells in brief the story of Pessoa's life , a life dedicated more to his own genius than to real action in the world.
In certain ways Pessoa offends my sensibility and this especially in regard to his anti- religious Poetry. But on the whole his work is challenging and inspiring. He sees Nature in the poems of one of the heteronyms in such a direct and powerful way. He contemplates the meaning of Life and Death with ironies. He plays upon his own ambitions as a Poet , defining himself as Greatness and yet seeing ironically the whole of the human enterprise.
In this small review I have indicated only a small number of the themes of his poetry, and a small part of its virtues. It is Poetry which challenges and inspires.
For the long - time reader any discovery of a writer who sees in a new way is a great gift.
I feel this book of Poetry is such a gift.

This is the poetry I long to read everything I pick up a book of poetry. I really can't stand American poetry (Lowell, Creeley, Merwin, especially). There is something overly Eastern-Ivy-school Pompous or plain irrelevant about their work. It is very difficult to penetrate their writings and I found it rarely rewarding when I understood their works - or whatever I understood.... They write, from what I have gleaned, without their hearts and overburden their writings with mind, intellect, a callous intelligence.

Pessoa, like Neruda, Hernandez, Lorca and other Iberian/Latin American poets write with a genuine simplicity and beauty. In translation, there is feeling, depth, philosophy and simplicity - which is what I enjoy, what edifies me. I want layers and this wonderful collection has layers. Whether writing as himself or as his 'alter-egos', Pessoa is the great idyllic poet, the great poet of resignation, weariness, tenderness, melancholy and withdrawal, viewing the world from his various abodes of personality.

Maybe there is a time and place for American poetry of the twentieth century - I much prefer the nineteenth century giant, Walt Whitman (who heavily inspired Pessoa, Neruda and other Portuguese/Spanish poets). At this point, a book like this is a boon, making poetry accessible, beauty available as opposed to being imprisoned in Ivy-tower constructions. (As a side note, Pessoa never graduated from a university - he attended a few courses and continued his education through personal studies... highly admirable.)

Discover this great-but-little-known-genius. His "Book of Disquiet" is the prose version of his poetry, the same philosophy, same beauty, the same melancholy transposed into a quasi-journal narrative. Your life will certainly be changed.

Pessoa is stunning. He probably belongs to the heavenly club of writers like Shakespeare & Nabokov. His sheer breadth & immense sensitivity is sufficient to inspire any ardent reader to pick up a pen and attempt writing. This book is a collection of some of his poems (written under 3 homonyms). Not all the poems are spectacular but the collections is sufficiently brilliant for the aesthetic soul. Buy this book for the love of the word & the singular opportunity to be in the presence of such a beautiful soul called Pessoa.

The verses in this selection are hideously delicious and entertainingly sad. Pessoa is great. As W. S. Merwin put it, there's nobody like him - well, on earth.

Some may complain that Richard Zenith's translation is too colloquial, but who knows, probably this is the way the original is.

Buy this book and read The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics). It's a life-changing expereince.

Always looking for books that will expand my universe I must say the books by this author fit the bill nicely. The title says it all. We are released from our limitations to the extent we bring other great thinkers and their thoughts and ideas into our life. Look inside,read a page,reflect and you will want to have a copy to expand your universe too.