{"product_id":"looking-for-poetry-isbn-9780375709883","title":"Looking for Poetry","description":"A uniquely appealing collection that reflects the variety and richness of South American poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarlos Drummond de Andrade, a native-born Brazilian, is universally recognized as the finest and most accessible modern Portugese-language poet and, along with Pablo Neruda, a poet of the common man, writing of home, family, friends, and love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRafael Alberti--an elegist primarily--came to Argentina (where he wrote many of his poems) in exile from Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The effects of that experience wind through the poet's  work in poems about the survival of the spirit in the face of personal and political tragedy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLooking for Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e also contains the simple and haunting poems of the Quechua Indians.Mark Strand is the author of nine books of poems, including \u003ci\u003eBlizzard of One\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize. He was the Poet Laureate of the United States in 1990, and currently teaches at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He lives in Chicago.\u003ci\u003eIntroduction to the Poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarlos Drummond de Andrade, one of the most revered Brazilian poets of the twentieth century, was born in 1902 in Itabira, a small mining town in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1987. His poems are, for the most part, bittersweet evocations of a small-town childhood or, more emblematically, remorseful accounts of a lost world or simply discreet and sometimes ironic views of the way things are. Though they seem to concern themselves with the ubiquity of loss, they are often amusing. So easily do humor and seriousness coexist in Drummond's work that their unexpected harmony may account in part for his popularity. This harmony is evident even in his city poems, where the balance is tipped toward seriousness, and where the reader is made to feel that life is a forced march and all any of us can do is endure it. Even in these, despite their litanies of ills, one feels the presence of humor and of a forgiving lightness that reveals, at the least, the poet's unusual capacity for sympathizing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike other poets of his period, Drummond's poetic loyalty was with Modernism. This meant turning his back on the inflated rhetoric of Symbolism and Parnassianism and adopting a rhetoric of his own, one that was plainer, and flexible enough to respond to the rapid changes around him. In Brazil these changes had largely to do with the shift from the old agricultural aristocracy to the quickly growing industrial class. It is easy to witness in Drummond's poems these two worlds in conflict. It is just as easy to see that what the twentieth century demanded was not just severance from the past but an alarming and sometimes desperate need to keep up with the present.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDespite Drummond's aesthetic allegiance, he nevertheless held on to elements commonly associated with traditional lyric poetry. His most famous poem, \"In the Middle of the Road,\" which first appeared in 1928, created an immediate sensation, some readers deeming it rubbish, others finding it stunningly original. What it ends up being is a very simple poem whose power depends on the incantatory repetition of the first line and the admission or promise that what it records will never be forgotten. It insists on the value of an event or an image that by any measure would be insignificant. It suggests that a poet should be responsible to all of what the world offers him. But, as in many Drummond poems, this one hangs in the balance between seriousness and humor. There is something outrageous about the claims this poem makes in its memorializing, and yet it enacts one of the central concerns of lyric poetry—to rescue from oblivion as much of our human experience as we can. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeven Sided Poem\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I was born, one of those\u003cbr\u003ecrooked angels who live in shadow\u003cbr\u003esaid: Go on, Carlos, be \u003ci\u003egauche\u003c\/i\u003e in life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe houses look out on men\u003cbr\u003echasing after women.\u003cbr\u003eIf the afternoon were blue\u003cbr\u003ethere might be less desire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe trolley passes full of legs:\u003cbr\u003ewhite, black, yellow legs.\u003cbr\u003eMy God, my heart asks, why so many legs.\u003cbr\u003eBut my eyes\u003cbr\u003eask nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man behind the mustache\u003cbr\u003eis serious, simple, and strong.\u003cbr\u003eHe hardly talks.\u003cbr\u003eHe has few and precious friends,\u003cbr\u003ethe man behind the glasses and the mustache.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy God, why hast Thou forsaken me.\u003cbr\u003eThou knewest I wasn't God\u003cbr\u003eThou knewest how weak I was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWorld, wide world,\u003cbr\u003eif my name were Harold\u003cbr\u003eit might be a rhyme\u003cbr\u003ebut no answer.\u003cbr\u003eWorld, wide world,\u003cbr\u003emy heart is bigger\u003cbr\u003ethan you are.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI shouldn't tell you\u003cbr\u003ebut this moon\u003cbr\u003eand this cognac\u003cbr\u003eare hell on a person's feelings. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn the Middle of the Road\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the middle of the road there was a stone\u003cbr\u003ethere was a stone in the middle of the road\u003cbr\u003ethere was a stone\u003cbr\u003ein the middle of the road there was a stone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'll never forget this event\u003cbr\u003ein the lifetime of my tired eyes.\u003cbr\u003eI'll never forget that in the middle of the road\u003cbr\u003ethere was a stone\u003cbr\u003ethere was a stone in the middle of the road\u003cbr\u003ein the middle of the road there was a stone. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eQuadrille\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn loved Teresa who loved Raymond\u003cbr\u003ewho loved Mary who loved Jack who loved Lily\u003cbr\u003ewho didn't love anybody.\u003cbr\u003eJohn went to the United States, Teresa to a convent\u003cbr\u003eRaymond died in an accident, Mary became an old maid,\u003cbr\u003eJack committed suicide and Lily married J. Pinto Fernandez\u003cbr\u003ewho didn't figure into the story.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300635562213,"sku":"NP9780375709883","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709883.jpg?v=1767731733","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/looking-for-poetry-isbn-9780375709883","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}