Sonnets and Other Poems (Hardcover, Bilingual Portu)

Poetry. Translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith. This is the first bilingual edition in English to offer a cross-section of the stunning output of lyric poetry produced by Portugal's Luis de Camoes (who also wrote The Lusiads, the greatest epic poem memorializing Vasco da Gama's inaugural voyage to India). A selection of forty sonnets is followed by poems using other metrical patterns and rhyme schemes, including terza rima, ottava rima, the sestina, the canzone, and the redondilha, a verse form typical of Portuguese folk poetry. Richard Zenith's limpid renditions, far from attempting to "update" Camoes, closely adhere to the original text, employing modern English but resisting the temptation to expand on the relatively small and simple lexicon of the Portuguese. His illuminating introduction shows how the 16th-century poet's life ad work were intimately entwined, and he discusses with candor his method for translating this poetry.