Haroldo de Campos (1929 - 2003)

So many poems, so few moments to absorb them... Once again this week, I’ve been introduced to a poet whose work I want to read only too late, in his New York Times obituary. We can no longer experience the poet in life, so we must see the poem/pictures Haroldo de Campos left behind.

The headline calls de Campos a “form-bending poet,” and he was that -- actually a form-creating poet, a concrete poet, whose works are as much visual as linguistic art. Several of his poems from the late 50’s & early 60’s, plus the manifesto of the Brazilian concretists and Marjorie Perloff’s essay on de Campos, are online at UbuWeb: Historical. The Haroldo de Campos Web site displays one moving concrete poem with a snippet of his recorded voice in its Flash introduction; it has no other actual poems, but lots of photographs & an extensive bibliography of CDs, books, films & theater works by de Campos.

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