Released:
5 September 2007

Cover Graphics:
Ágnes Cserháti with photographs by Mark Knight

Printing:
Gaspereau Press, Kentville, Nova Scotia | jacket cover: processed colour on Domtar Natural | inside cover: letterpress on Strathmore Komono Red | inside: offset on Zephyr Antique Book Laid | composed in Lisboa Sans OSF Light | Smyth-sewn and perfect bound

Table of Contents | Poems | Author Page

With these translations into English of the poems of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Alberto Caeiro, Michael Lee Rattigan matches the simple directness, naturalness, and at times deliberate naivety of the original. The shepherd’s distinct philosophy is faithfully rendered in these subtly re-worked poems that preserve the form of unrhymed free verse and the concision of the Portuguese language. The balance between anticipation and lived reality in the moment – a key note to the poetry written in the heteronym – is expressed with great tenderness and clarity. Maintained in Rattigan’s careful and sensitive translations, the assertion of rightness is given a characteristic kind of repetition as if the poet were pointing out basic fact in the most common sense. Any effort to over-think this sensitivity toward the originality of things is brushed off with stone-cold directness. The “shocking reality” that everything in nature is individual and distinct runs through every one of the poems. Perhaps the clearest exposition of the approach to life and nature expressed in the heteronym, the “joy” experienced in this perception is given dramatic power: “To exist is enough to be complete”.

Thomas Crosse, a lesser-known English heteronym of Pessoa’s, was entrusted the task of gathering the poems of Caeiro into one. To our benefit, capturing Caeiro’s unique voice with an immediacy that is true to the original, Michael Lee Rattigan’s UK publication has at last successfully carried out Crosse’s task.

Publisher's Note:
A new Alberto Caeiro poem was discovered penciled on the flyleaf of a book in Pessoa's personal library, dating probably from around 1920. Richard Zenith first brought this discovery to Michael Lee Rattigan's attention on 22 June 2010 and the poem was subsequently translated on 20 August 2010. It was published in leaflet form by rufus books on 2 September 2010 and is now available gratis as an insert to the book within the 'Detached Poems' segment, ensuring that the collection remains truly complete. (For anyone who purchased a copy of this book prior to 2 September 2010, the leaflet can be obtained free of charge. Please email for further details.)

REVIEW

On Alberto Caeiro: The Complete Poems/Poesia Completa: "This collection "reminds us that "To exist is enough to be complete". This is certainly what Caeiro would have said of it if he had been sent The Complete Poems for review. The translator, who is also the enabler, cannot be congratulated… enough."
Read full review…
John Pilling, PN Review (January-February 2009)