Fernando Pessoa

So I kind of made a little bit of a rule to myself.

Each poet would only get one poem, except for Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman and Pessoa.

But otherwise, every poet got one.

And sometimes I put in the one you wouldn't expect.

So now, now some of my students know them at least.

Yeah.

Well, a bunch of people are asking, actually, and I love A Book of Disquiet, but people are asking why Pessoa.

A few people are not familiar with Pessoa, including him next to Emily Dickinson, based on what you just did.

Martinho da Arcada, which opened in 1782, is the oldest café still operating in the city.

Other notable spots included Café Nicola and A Brasileira, which were frequented by famous poets like Manuel do Bocage and Fernando Pessoa.

One of the most influential was Café Marrare, which opened in 1820 and became a central meeting place for the government and the intelligentsia.

This venue was so prominent that it inspired a local saying about its influence over Lisbon society.

Um, where she has Holderlin and, and, uh, Scardinelli, I think is the, put me in mind of, uh, one of the great reading experiences I've had in recent years.

Pessoa's, uh, uh, book of disquiet, which is my introduction to him.

And that's going into the deep end.

Um, all those heteronyms of.

It creates an opportunity for us to mend and mend redemptively.

Fernando Pessoa is a beautifully dark, monumental work by Richard Serra named after a Portuguese poet with a turn for lamentation.

The work does not tell us to cheer up or point us in a brighter direction, what people often do when we tell them our troubles.

The large scale and monumental character of this intensely somber sculpture implicitly declares the normality and universality of difficulty.

It is confident that we will recognize the legitimate place of solemn emotions in an ordinary life.

Rather than leaving us alone with our darker moods, the work proclaims them as central features of life.

In its stark gravity, Richard Serra's Fernando Pessoa creates a dignified home for sorrow.

Too many books have been written trying to explain what art might be for.