Sonnets and Other Poems

Sonnets and Other Poems is the first bilingual edition in English to offer a cross-section of lyric poetry by Portugal's Lu s de Cam es, author of The Lusiads (1572), the great Renaissance epic memorializing Vasco da Gama's inaugural voyage to India (1497-99). A selection of forty sonnets is followed by poems using other metrical patterns and rhyme schemes, including terza rima, ottava rima, the sestina, the canzone, and the redondilha, a verse form typical of Portuguese poetry. Richard Zenith's fluid renditions, far from attempting to "update" Cam es, closely adhere to the original text, employing modern English but resisting the temptation to expand on the relatively small and simple lexicon of the Portuguese. Along with discussing his method of translation, Zenith's illuminating introduction shows how Cam es's life and work were intimately entwined.