[Carlos Drummond de Andrade] is probably the most important poet writing at this time in Brazil. Out of his humor and irony, Drummond continues to compose with a curious juxtaposition of the scholarly word with the vulgar. It is especially in his poetry that modern Brazilian literature has achieved the ennoblement of regionalistic and popular expressions. As a master of the delayed cultural envelope, the interpretative reference, Drummond delights in partial and temporary obscurity before everything becomes clear by the last line. His fellow countrymen enjoy in his poetry the following qualities also: sensuous correspondences, synaesthesias, apparent contradictions, anthropomorphizations, dehumanizations, objectifications of the abstract, and subjectifications of the concrete. But far more impressive than any technical virtuosity displayed in his poetry is Drummond's utterly courageous and incorruptible honesty with the human situation, the word, and himself.

Although he lacks the lyric gusto and dazzling verbal mastery of Manuel...