Carlos Drummond de Andrade (October 31, 1902 - August 17, 1987) was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem "Canção Amiga" ("Friendly Song") was printed on the 50-cruzados note. October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 61 days remaining, as the final day of October. ... 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Poets are authors of poems, or of other forms of poetry such as dramatic verse. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... The Cruzado was the monetary unit of Brazil from 1986 to 1990. ...

Drummond was born in Itabira, a rural village in Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. His parents were farmers who owned their own land. He went to a school of pharmacy in Belo Horizonte and became a pharmacist. He worked in government service for most of his life, eventually becoming director of history for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service of Brazil. Minas Gerais (pronounced IPA ) is one of the states of Brazil, the second most populous in the federation. ... Bowl of Hygeia Pharmacy (from the Greek φάρμακον = drug) is the profession charged with assuring the safe use of medication. ... Belo Horizonte (a Portuguese name meaning beautiful horizon) is among the most important cities in Brazil. ...

Though his earliest poems are formal and satirical, Drummond quickly adopted the new forms of Brazilian modernism that were evolving in the 1920s, incited by the work of Mário de Andrade (to whom he was not related). He adopted a whitmanian free verse, mingling a speech fluent in elegance and truth about the surrounding, many times quotidian, world, with a fluidity of thought. It is as if Wordsworth was endowed with more modern, contorted and surrealistic devices and fancy. Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America and in Australia as the Roaring Twenties . In Europe it is sometimes refered to as the Golden Twenties. ... Painting of Mário de Andrade (1927) by Lasar Segall, a Lithuanian painter in Brazil whom Andrade befriended; Andrade wrote a book about him in 1935. ...

Drummond's best-known poem is his hymn to a working man, "José." It is a poem of desolation:

Key in hand,

you want to open the door -

there is no door. . .

The work of Carlos Drummond is generally divided into several segments, which appear very markedly in each of his books. But this is somewhat misleading, since even in the midst of his every-day poems or his socialist, politicized poems, there appears creations which can be easily incorporated into his later metaphysical canon; and none of these styles is completely free of the others. There's surely much metaphysical content in even his most rancid political poems.

The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A Máquina do Mundo (The Machine of the World). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all the knowledge possible, and the summula of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance alegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas. There are also hints from Dante and the form is adapted from T.S. Eliot's dantesque passage in Little Gidding. It is considered by some to be one of the peaks of lyric poetry in the 20th Century, and has been voted by a distinct corpus of critics as the greatest brazilian poem of all times.

Drummond is a favorite of American poets, a number of whom, including Mark Strand and Lloyd Schwartz, have translated him. Later writers and critics have sometimes credited his relationship with Elizabeth Bishop, his first English language translator, as influential for his American reception, but though she admired him Bishop claimed she barely knew him. In an interview with George Starbuck in 1977, she said: Mark Strand (born April 11, 1934) is an American poet, born in Canada. ... Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979), was an American poet and writer, increasingly regarded as one of the finest 20th century poets writing in English. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... George Starbuck (1931-1996) was an American poet of the neo-formalist school. ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ...

I didn't know him at all. He's supposed to be very shy. I'm supposed to be very shy. We've met once — on the sidewalk at night. We had just come out of the same restaurant, and he kissed my hand politely when we were introduced.[1]

External links

• The Elephant, translated by Mark Strand. From Ploughshares, 1975.

• In the Middle of the Road, translated by Elizabeth Bishop.

• Biography of Carlos Drummond de Andrade (in Portuguese).