A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

by Fernando Pessoa

The largest and richest English-language volume of poetry from "the greatest twentieth-century writer you have never heard of" (Los Angeles Times)

Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Richard Zenith, the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Pessoa: A Biography

A Penguin Classic

Writing obsessively in French, English, and Portuguese, poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) left a prodigious...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143039555
• ISBN13: 9780143039556
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Universe Expansion

Always looking for books that will expand my universe I must say the books by this author fit the bill nicely. The title says it all. We are released from our limitations to the extent we bring other great thinkers and their thoughts and ideas into our life. Look inside,read a page,reflect and you will want to have a copy to expand your universe too.

Life changes when you read Pessoa...

This is the poetry I long to read everything I pick up a book of poetry. I really can't stand American poetry (Lowell, Creeley, Merwin, especially). There is something overly Eastern-Ivy-school Pompous or plain irrelevant about their work. It is very difficult to penetrate their writings and I found it rarely rewarding when I understood their works - or whatever I understood.... They write, from what I have gleaned, without their hearts and overburden their writings with mind, intellect, a callous intelligence. Pessoa, like Neruda, Hernandez, Lorca and other Iberian/Latin American poets write with a genuine simplicity and beauty. In translation, there is feeling, depth, philosophy and simplicity - which is what I enjoy, what edifies me. I want layers and this wonderful collection has layers. Whether writing as himself or as his 'alter-egos', Pessoa is the great idyllic poet, the great poet of resignation, weariness, tenderness, melancholy and withdrawal, viewing the world from his various abodes of personality. Maybe there is a time and place for American poetry of the twentieth century - I much prefer the nineteenth century giant, Walt Whitman (who heavily inspired Pessoa, Neruda and other Portuguese/Spanish poets). At this point, a book like this is a boon, making poetry accessible, beauty available as opposed to being imprisoned in Ivy-tower constructions. (As a side note, Pessoa never graduated from a university - he attended a few courses and continued his education through personal studies... highly admirable.) Discover this great-but-little-known-genius. His "Book of Disquiet" is the prose version of his poetry, the same philosophy, same beauty, the same melancholy transposed into a quasi-journal narrative. Your life will certainly be changed.

sometimes sad, sometimes scary, but always stunning...

The verses in this selection are hideously delicious and entertainingly sad. Pessoa is great. As W. S. Merwin put it, there's nobody like him - well, on earth. Some may complain that Richard Zenith's translation is too colloquial, but who knows, probably this is the way the original is. Buy this book and read The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics). It's a life-changing expereince.