1 1

Archipelago Books

Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes

Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes

by Corsino Fortes, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn and Sean O'Brien

$16.00
$16.00
Available as E-Book International Literature Poets & Poetry
Format
This title can be purchased from your favorite e-book retailer,
including  many independent booksellers.

Buy on Amazon   Buy on iBooks   Buy on Barnes&Noble

Concerned with giving voice to Cape Verdean life, Fortes writes in Cape Verdean Creole - and not just standard Portuguese - a powerful statement reinforcing the islands' distinctive African nature. However, his poems are often written from the perspective of an exile - and themes of exile and redemptive return recur in his work. This collection introduces English readers to Fortes, and the poet's beautiful and unique use of language.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9780914671114
Pages: 150
Publication Date:

Praise

I would recommend this magnificent, generous, and bilingual presentation of Corsino Fortes’s work to anyone who enjoys grappling with the poignant, the sensuous, and the esoteric. It will be difficult for me to forget the ‘Tree and drum of the ancient viola’ and the sardine as ‘a flickering tongue in the sea’s mouth’; nor ‘Eating the earth eating the earth eating the earth,’ when ‘the earth is flesh’; nor Fortes’s prayer-command to the sunflower to ‘enter [him] / Before the sun / Disorients you Sunflower!'
—Asymptote Journal

Concerned with giving voice to Cape Verdean life, Fortes writes in Cape Verdean Creole – and not just standard Portuguese – a powerful statement reinforcing the islands’ distinctive African nature. However, his poems are often written from the perspective of an exile – and themes of exile and redemptive return recur in his work. This collection introduces English readers to Fortes, and the poet’s beautiful and unique use of language.
—Portuguese American Journal

Author of works like Pão e Fonema [Bread and Phoneme] (1974) or Árvore e Tambor [Tree and Drum] (1986), his work expresses a new awareness of Cape Verdian reality and a new reading of cultural tradition from the archipelago.
—Antonio Miranda

View full details

  • Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a New York Review Books Gift Card.

    Gift Cards 

  • A membership for yourself or as a gift for a special reader will promise a year of good reading.

    Join NYRB Classics Book Club 

  • Is there a book that you’d like to see back in print, or that you think we should consider for one of our series? Let us know!

    Tell us about it