Much of the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade moves upon the drama of obsessing ideas, for he is obsessed with several convictions of the perfectionist: That he is impossible. That language is absolutely insufficient for the needs of communication. That life is ineffable. That the social order is filled with an injustice for which there is no final resolution. That even though love turns out to be useless, one must love in order that existence may become its own essence. These ideas, and others like them, flow from the soul of a man who will admit of no compromise with what should be in the name of what is. (p. 32)

In "Segrêdo (Secret)," a poem that illustrates the thesis "You cannot communicate poetry," Drummond says, "Everything is possible, only I am impossible."… It is from [a] sense of human impossibility, of personal isolation and abstraction, that...