SOURCE: "Fernando Pessoa as Anti-Poet: Alberto Caeiro," in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Vol. XLVI, No. 1, January 1969, pp. 39-47.

In this excerpt, Sheets discusses Pessoa's Alberto Caeiro heteronym, and relates his poetic aesthetic to Zen Buddhism, existentialism, and that of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet.

If one accepts poetry in the traditional sense, as a way of looking at things, not directly, but following the poet's eye, if one thus accepts the poet as a perceptive interpreter of his surroundings, then the intention of Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa's first heteronym, is distinctly antipoetical….

In the 1935 letter to Casais Monteiro in which he discusses the genesis of the heteronyms, Pessoa describes his conscious attempts, early in March, 1914, to create a pastoral poet; when at last he gave up, lacking inspiration, he was suddenly compelled to go to his desk, where he took out paper and began to write. Without stopping, he...