The presence of Pessoa

by George Monteiro

The Presence of Pessoa is the first study of Pessoa's influence on twentieth-century poets, who have responded to him in surprising and sometimes comic ways. Monteiro traces the Pessoan threads in the work of such contemporaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, John Wain, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as earlier poets Thomas Merton, Edouard Roditi, and Roy Campbell. The complete text of Campbell's pioneering biocritical study of Pessoa, left unfinished at Campbell's death, is published for the first time in book form. Besides tracing Pessoa's influences on the English-speaking world, Monteiro provides refreshingly new and penetrating interpretations of Pessoa's Mensagem (Message) and the modernist novella O Banqueiro Anarquista (The Anarchist Banker). In particular, The Presence of Pessoa includes an innovative reading of Oates's The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories and Ferlinghetti's novella Love in the Days of Rage.