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Poetas de Lisboa

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Esta edición bilingüe portugués-español e ilustrada ofrece a todos los lectores hablantes de español interesados en poesía versos escritos por grandes poetas que nacieron o vivieron en la capital de Portugal. A los aclamados Luís de Camões y Fernando Pessoa se unen otros tres poetas de gran importancia en el mundo de habla portuguesa -Cesário Verde, Mário de Sá-Carneiro y Florbela Espanca-.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

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About the author

Luís de Camões

607 books329 followers
Luís Vaz de Camões (Portuguese pronunciation: [luˈiʃ vaʃ dɨ kaˈmõȷ̃ʃ]; sometimes rendered in English as Camoens; c. 1524 – June 10, 1580) is considered Portugal's, and the Portuguese language's, greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry (in Portuguese and in Spanish) and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads). His recollection of poetry The Parnasum of Luís de Camões was lost in his lifetime.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%AD...

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
Profile Image for leynes.
1,316 reviews3,685 followers
September 20, 2023
My mom is literally the sweetest person in the world. She went to Lisbon with her best friend and visited Ler Devagar (a popular bookshop in the city), so that she could bring back a book for me. I was nervously excited to see what she had selected (we don't necessarily share similar reading tastes) and I was pleasantly surprised that she chose this poetry collection penned by Lisbon's most famous. She told me that she chatted with one of the booksellers and that the woman recommended this collection specifically because Florbela's work isn't easy to come by in translation and she was one of her favorite poets. How sweet is that?

The collection is bilingual so if I ever find the time to learn Portuguese (something I actually really wanna do), I can't wait to come back to the original text as well as its English translation. The translation into English was done by Martin D'Evelin and Martin Earl, with differing success. The introduction by Cláudia Pazos-Alonso was excellent and provided great insight into the significance of these five poets for the Portuguese literary landscape.

Luís de Camões (*1524 †1579)
Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Milton, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads). The influence of his masterpiece Os Lusíadas is so profound that Portuguese is sometimes called the "language of Camões". The day of his death, 10 June OS, is Portugal's national day.

Of course, I had heard of the name before but I couldn't have told you anything about Camões even if my life had depended on it. I am so happy that this collection properly introduced me to his work. Lisbon Poets collects some of his sonnets (so, so beautiful!) and a few stanzas from Os Lusíadas. You guys know I'm a sucker for long narrative poem (Dante and Homer are literally my homeboys), so it's no surprise that I want to read Camões' masterpiece as well. What surprised me the most is the fact that I actually fell in love with his (love) sonnets. They were so beautifully written (and very well translated), they really tore at my heartstrings.
Love is a fire that burns invisible,
It's a wound that hurts without torment,
It's a discontent contentment,
It's pain that drives one mad and isn't painful.
I know it's cheesy as hell, and you would never hear such proclamations of love and burning desire from me, but I always find it fascinating to get a peek into a person's psyche who has lived so long ago. We humans are such simple creatures, our core hasn't changed all that much. Camões' poetry, which rings true today, proves that.

Cesário Verde (*1855 †1886)
After Camões, the collection takes a big time jump forward into the 19th century. Cesário Verde's work, while mostly ignored during his lifetime and not well known outside of the country's borders even today, is generally considered to be amongst the most important in Portuguese poetry and is widely taught in schools. This is partly due to his being championed by many other authors after his death, notably Fernando Pessoa.

Cesário Verde is frequently hailed as both one of Portugal's finest urban poets and one of the country's greatest describers of the countryside. Thus, Verde's poems (always written in the alexandrine structure) are mostly split into “city poems” and “countryside poems” (the few that escape these two categories dealing with love, often scorned.)

Personally, I didn't vibe with his style at all. I didn't find his descriptions all that vivid and his blatant sexism was hard to stomach. In his love poems, he goes on and on about how a good wife would never cause her husband distress, he always mentions and describes a woman's breasts and her buxom, he muses about "the nectar that comes from a woman's caress", and I just wanted to puke honestly. On top of that, I also found the translation to be subpar, especially the use of modern words, e.g. "the sad drunken alkies", really pulled me out of the flow of the poems.
I can love you as Dante loved Beatrice,
Follow you always as light follows its ray,
But walk over the churchly precipice,
with you, no way!
But, to be fair, there were also many instances were I really didn't understand the poems at all. For example, the first two lines of the stanza above are really beautiful and speak of the importance of loyalty for love, but then Verde does a complete turnaround in the last two lines, striking a more humorous note, asserting the impossibility of marriage. So basically you are willing to walk through hell for someone but you won't marry them? Okay? Work, bitch.

Mário de Sá-Carneiro (*1890 †1916)
Sá-Carneiro is one of the best known authors of the "Geração D'Orpheu", and is usually considered their greatest poet, after Fernando Pessoa. He also wrote plays and novellas. In 1913, he published A Confissão de Lúcio, one of his most famous works – a novella I definitely want to read since it deals with homoerotic themes. In the introduction, Pazos-Alonso writes: "His claim to modernity hinges on his queer sensibility, perhaps most suggestively expressed in the transgressive 'To be a Woman'. His gender-bending elevation of failure to an art form is exquisitely crystallised in the famous verse 'I am neither myself nor the other'."

To be honest, from the introduction alone, I expected to appreciate and enjoy his "queer" poems a lot more than I actually did. I found him to be quite misogynist and therefore not that subversive. Even his famous 'To be a Woman' didn't read like a man questioning his gender, and more like a backhanded attack on the silliness of women: "I would like to be a woman in order to spend the entire day / talking about fashion and gossiping - how amusing." Umm, okay?? Very rich coming from a man whose father financed his entire bohemian lifestyle.

What I really ended up appreciating where his darker poems, the ones in which his depression (the illness that would eventually lead to his suicide) seeps through:
Castrated of soul and not knowing the remedy,
every afternoon, I sink a little deeper into grief...
—Am I an emigrant from another world
where even in the throes of my pain I cannot find myself?...
His despair is palpable. His feeling of displacement and not being able to fit in are feelings many people can relate to. I wouldn't recommend reading his poems if your already in a gloomy mood. They are such a downer: "I did not misplace my soul, / I remained with it, lost inside. / And so I weep in life / the passing of my soul."

His most interesting and challenging poem –
I am neither myself nor the other,
I am something in the middle:
a pillar holding up a bridge of boredom
that extends from me, right to the Other.
– is one I keep coming back to. It is very intriguing since, from a modern point of view, it's so easy to see in it the idea of gender as a spectrum, of identity as something fluid and unstable (or at least not rigid). But at the same time it could also mean something completely different. What does he mean when he writes of the "bridge of boredom"? His own life/ the human condition that doesn't satisfy him?

Florbela Espanca (*1894 †1930)
Out of the five poets featured in this collection, Florbela Espanca is the only woman. In Portugal, she is known for her passionate and feminist poetry. Fernando Pessoa later said she was his "twin soul". Like Sá-Carneiro, she died by suicide.
In life, for me, there's no delight.
I cry convulsively night and day...
Her poems left me saddened, as her repression and despair are easily discernible and understandable. Her desire to satisfy her need to love freely as a woman and her inability to channel that love into a socially acceptable, exclusive, monogamous mode, can be seen in her poems.

In 'Voluptuousness', she writes brazenly: "I carry vermilion dahlias between my thighs... / They're the sun's fingertips when I embrace you, / Stuck in your chest like lances!" In 'The Verses I Made for You', her anger at the patriarchy is front and center: "A woman's mouth is always pretty / If she holds her tongue."

Fernando Pessoa (*1888 †1935)
The last poet needs no introduction: Fernando Pessoa, Portugal's most famous writers and one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century. I wrote extensively about Pessoa and his various literary alter egos in my review of I Have More Souls Than One, so I'll keep it short here.

Lisbon Poets collects poems from Pessoa as Alberto Caeiro ("So he had that deep sadness / he never quite revealed he had / but he walked the city as if walking in the fields, / full of sorrow, as if pressing petals between the pages of a book / and putting flowers into jugs..."), as Ricardo Reis ("In a single gasp, / we live and die. So seize the day, / for the day is what you are."), as himself ("The child I once was still weeps on the road...") and as Álvaro de Campos ("a stranger here [in Lisbon] as in everywhere else, / uncertain in life, erratic in soul, / a ghost wandering in the rooms of memories...").

Pessoa is always a joy to read and I can't wait to keep discovering more from him throughout my life!
Profile Image for Miriam Cihodariu.
769 reviews166 followers
January 1, 2019
For what is essentially a souvenir book (which I picked up from the famous Livraria Lello in Porto), this little anthology has proved to be better than expected. It introduces you to all the major poets from Portuguese tradition, with a little bio and a selection of representative poems from each of them.

Besides Fernando Pessoa and Luis de Camoes, which I was already familiar with, there's probably not a very high chance for me to come across the translated works of any of the others. The translations also struck me as being as good as possible (considering how tricky poetry is to translate without losing its spirit).

A lovely quote:
Ai, como eu tenho saudades / Dos sohnos que não sonhei!... (How deep is my longing / For the dreams I did not dream!) - Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Dispersão (Dispersion)
Profile Image for Austra.
809 reviews115 followers
December 30, 2021
Gana interesants ieskats portugāļu dzejas klasikā (šamējiem, šķiet, ir stipra nosliece uz pašnāvībām), bet, kā jau ar izlasēm tas ir - ne viss uzrunā. Varbūt tā vienkārši mana problēma ar nespēju sajust dzeju angļu valodā. Visvairāk uzrunāja Fernando Pessoa, viņa oriģinālajā personā (šim dzejniekam, redz, bija vēl daži alter ego, kas arī rakstīja dzeju un vēstules viens otram), būs kādreiz jāuzmeklē kāds pilnīgāks viņa dzejas izdevums.

“I would like to be a woman to excite those who would look at me,
I would like to be a woman so that I could say no to myself...” (Mário de Sá-Carneiro)
Profile Image for Bedoor Khalaf.
Author 6 books63 followers
November 9, 2017
A good collection of poetry. I loved Pessoa’s poems, they were truly beautiful and I’m sure to have appreciated them more if I read them in their original language. Will definitely look for more of Pessoa’s poems for further reading.
Profile Image for Lauren .
1,834 reviews2,550 followers
Read
September 25, 2021
Tu julgas que eu não sei que tu me mentes
Quando o teu doce olhar pousa no meu?
Pois julgas que eu não sei o que tu sentes?
Qual a imagem que alberga o peito tu?
//
You think i don't know when you're lying to me
When your soft gaze alights on mine?
Do you really think i don't know what you feel?
What picture is framed inside your heart?


"Lies" (first stanza) by Florabela Espanca, tr. by Austen Hyde

▪️LISBON POETS: Luís de Camões, Cesário Verde, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Florabela Espanca, Fernando Pessoa, translated from the Portuguese by Austen Hyde and Martin D'Evelin, 2015.

📚 My ode to the beautiful Portuguese city where I was 3 years ago this week! I picked up this book in Lisbon, and read in full these years later.

The POETS book includes work by 5 Portuguese poets, some known worldwide (Pessoa) and others not, but a beautiful introduction via translation in this bilingual edition.

Particularly struck by the works of Sá-Caneiro, who I did not know before reading this anthology. Also the little taste of Pessoa here (and his heteronym alters) makes me all the more eager to get back to his work soon.

Tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
//
I have in me all of the dreams of the world.


Fragment of "The Tobacconist" by Alvaro de Campos [Fernando Pessoa]
71 reviews3 followers
June 3, 2024
First: an inexcusably grotesque cover for a book. I haven’t read much Portuguese poetry before this and I never felt at home while reading it. The older I get the more frequently I am struck by the fear that there are entire literary traditions with which I will never be comfortable—worlds that are forever closed off from me
Profile Image for Mimozë.
89 reviews41 followers
April 9, 2018
A nice, although rather short, introduction to Lisbon poets.
Profile Image for Joshua Loong.
143 reviews42 followers
April 15, 2023
Picked this up in a tourist shop in Lisbon, and it did not disappoint. Now, as with every poetry anthology, there were several poems and poets in here that didn’t quite work with me. But my goodness, Pessoa was a revelation. I know I can’t even fully appreciate his genius since some of it is lost in translation in English, but what I could read was just wonderful. Probably some of my favourite poetry I’ve read, and it was extra special reading his work in the plazas and on the trains of his hometown. Both him and Sá-Carneiro were wonderful.
Profile Image for David Pascual.
136 reviews
April 25, 2022
"[...]
Soltei com devoção lembranças inda escravas,
No espaço construí fantásticos castelos,
No tanque debrucei-me em que te debruçavas,
E onde o luar parava os raios amarelos."

Un soplo de aire fresco en mi rutina habitual de lectura. Me gusta la poesía, aunque debo confesar que no soy para nada asiduo a leerla, valga la contradicción. Por este motivo, tener entre manos un libro de poesía es una reconfortante sensación. He disfrutado mucho de esta recopilación de poemas de 5 grandes exponentes de la poesía portuguesa que transmiten con sus versos toda una complejidad de emociones y sentidos. Un gozo para la vista, la mente y el corazón.

"[...]
E é amar-te, assim, perdidamente...
É seres alma e sangue e vida em mim
E dizê-lo cantando a toda a gente!"
Profile Image for Sheisheioh.
13 reviews1 follower
March 31, 2024
La selecció de poemes busca oferir una vista general del modernisme portuguès, però es troba a faltar major explicació biogràfica de cada autor/a i alguns apunts a peu de pàgina, tant per esclarir termes portuguesos com per ubicar al lector sobre detalls més relacionats amb la cultura portuguesa o el seu relat històric.
Profile Image for iz.
229 reviews1 follower
August 14, 2025
for a souvenir poetry book this was actually quite good!
Profile Image for dana a.
36 reviews
September 22, 2025
Translated poetry should be illegal but I enjoyed the two emo kids Mario and florbela (who could’ve been together rather than both commit suicide) and I am hoe for pessoa
Profile Image for Josh.
185 reviews1 follower
February 27, 2025
A beautiful little window through time, place, and verse.

As with any collection there are some that don't connect and others that hit deep. Even translated, you can see there is some beautiful language woven through some of Lisbon's great poetic works. I can imagine reading this there would be a wonderful experience.

3 Portuguese Fados out of 5

🎻🎻🎻⬛⬛
Profile Image for Clementina Erri.
28 reviews3 followers
March 14, 2020
Ein schöner kleiner Überblick mit Illustrationen und Angaben zum Leben der Personen. Die ausgewählten Gedichte passen gut zu dem beschriebenen Lebenslauf. Ein super Coffeetable-Book, in dem man auch wirklich lesen kann und Gedichten, die zum nachdenken anregen.
Profile Image for David Escobar Arango.
28 reviews153 followers
February 8, 2023
Solo había leído a Pessoa y a Camoes. Me parecieron magníficos, se siente unos tonos, cierta música que los une a través de los tiempos. Las ciudades tienen alma y sus poetas la proyectan al infinito.
Profile Image for Raluca.
894 reviews40 followers
January 8, 2018
Ai, como eu tenho saudades / Dos sohnos que não sonhei!... (How deep is my longing / For the dreams I did not dream!) - Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Dispersão (Dispersion)

I didn't necessarily expect much from what is, essentially, a souvenir book. But it proved a very enjoyable introduction to poets I'd only ever heard the name of, if that. The translations were largely successful, as far as I could tell, although maybe some of the charm was lost by not keeping the rhyme. I'm all for while verse, don't get me wrong - but if the original had a classical form, try to keep it? (Backseat translators are as bad as backseat drivers.)
Profile Image for Paula.
21 reviews1 follower
January 5, 2020
I don’t usually read poetry, but my brother-in-law (of sorts) gave me this. I liked that this book gave me more context of Lisbon and Portugal through several years.

Putting the authors in order from my favorite to least favorite:
1. Fernando Pessoa (liked the Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis poems).
2. Would be a tie between Mario de Sá-Carneiro and Florbela Espanca.
3. Cesário Verde.
4. Luis de Camões.

Profile Image for Clara Dresaire.
62 reviews2 followers
April 16, 2024
Vaig comprar aquest llibre la meva primera setmana a Lisboa i l'he anat llegint a diferents punts de la ciutat i m'ha encantat i emocionat. he intentat llegir tots els poemes en Portugués i he de dir que he entés la majoria prou bé!!! m'ha semblat maquíssim que ha donat la casualitat que molts poemes reflectien exactament el que sentia en cada moment que els llegia i m'han anat acompanyant durant tot el viatge personal que he fet❤️!!!!!!
Profile Image for Mike.
490 reviews
May 8, 2019
It felt lost in the translation, but just the same was enjoyable to read.....
Profile Image for Tracey Sinclair.
Author 15 books91 followers
December 11, 2019
I didn't particularly love the poetry, but this is a good primer for Portuguese poetry, which I knew nothing about, and it's a gorgeously produced paperback.
Profile Image for ninon.
215 reviews45 followers
July 4, 2023
je lis ca pour m endormir car je suis a lisbonne donc je laisse sa chance a la culture locale #MerciLisbonne
Profile Image for Jannelle.
9 reviews
November 16, 2024
Def enjoyed, would probs hit harder if i could read in its original Portuguese text, but ill get on that
Profile Image for Taylor Johnston.
82 reviews1 follower
February 17, 2025
What an introduction to Lisbon poets. Pessoa is a genius and his poetry pulls and twists at the heartstrings
Profile Image for Lisa MJ.
10 reviews
November 6, 2024
Enjoyed the poetic minds of these Portuguese writers!!
Profile Image for Kendall McClain.
243 reviews
December 28, 2023
love an anthology and this was interesting!! Huge fan of Mário de Sá-Carneiro, though some other poets fell a bit short for me.
Profile Image for Antonia.
50 reviews8 followers
September 18, 2024
Camoes - writes one gut-wrenchingly real poem about love and then the rest are colonization poems

Cesario - misunderstood, feeling

Carneiro - too rich for his own good. bored of life itself

Florbela - Sylvia Plath, Reiner Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson, but more passion (and madness)

Pessoa - created birth charts for his heteronyms; definitely matches my freak
Profile Image for Gemma.
790 reviews57 followers
September 10, 2020
Me lo compré en Lisboa cuando estuve de erasmus porque me llamó la atención. La edición me ha gustado, tiene unas ilustraciones muy originales, una breve explicación de la vida y obra de los cinco poetas que salen en la cubierta (Luís de Camões, Cesário Verde, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Florbela Espanca y Fernando Pessoa) y una selección de sus poemas. No he conectado mucho con la mayoría de las composiciones, pero he descubierto bastantes curiosidades. Entre ellas, que Camões perdió un ojo en combate (esto me ha recordado al brazo de Cervantes) y que Pessoa tiene varios heterónimos. Al final hay una pequeña bibliografía muy útil que en algún momento consultaré para saber más sobre estos poetas lisboetas.
Profile Image for María López Moreno.
78 reviews3 followers
June 29, 2024
Compré este libro en la librería "Ler Devagar" de Lisboa, interesante visitarla si se pasea por LxMarket.

Ahora a la reseña, recomiendo este poemario (en inglés y portugués) a cualquier lector que ame la poesía, Portugal o (idealmente) ambas.

Todos los autores son talentos de la literatura lusa. Me ha encantado conocer las mil caras de Pessoa.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews

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