The Pip Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century Volume 3 – Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain: 20 Contemporary Brazilian Poets

For the third volume of the ongoing series of PIP anthologies of world poetry, the publisher decided to reissue the popular anthology of contemporary Brazilian poets, published originally by Sun & Moon Press in 1997, completely revised and reedited by Douglas Messerli in collaboration with Régis Bonvicino, one the original editors. Like the original volume, this collection presents the exciting works of younger Brazilian poets—Francisco Alvim, Arnaldo Antunes, Nelson Ascher, Carlos Ávila, Carlito Azevedo, Lenora de Barros, Régis Bonvicino, Angela de Campos, Age de Carvalho, Ana Cristina Cesar, Horácio Costa, Júlio Castañon Guimarães, Paulo Leminski, Duda Machado, Antonio Moura, Torquato Neto, Claudia Roquette-Pino, Waly Salomão, Federico Tavares Bastos Barbosa, and Josely Vianna Baptista—in the context of the immense influence of and reaction to the Modernist and experimental traditions of Brazilian literature. Additionally, this new version includes more extensive and updated biographical information, complete listings of all books of poetry in the original language and in translation, and additional poems, translated since the Sun & Moon Press edition.

The first major Brazilian anthology of poetry published in English since Elizabeth Bishop's groundbreaking An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry of 1972, the anthology received major attention in the Brazilian press upon its original publication. Max Winter wrote in The Poetry Project Newsletter: "The styles displayed in Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain range from luminosity in nakedness to cosmic prescience in spatial arrangement. The anthology's poets have all struggled out from under the oppression of political regimes; the verve and rage that has empowered their liberation empowers their poems as well."