In Booktegi there is a gem that hanged in 2018, the poems of Thoreau (real and apocryphal), by Antonio Casado da Rocha. In his foreword, Casado da Rocha states that Henry David Thoreau (Concord, Massachusetts, 1817-1862, American philosopher, writer and naturalist) was not a good poet. In fact, the antologist has only taken the view of Thoreau himself: “I have been a school teacher, tutor, agrimensor, gardener, farmer, wall painter, carpenter, bricklayer, laborer, penguin, writer and poet.”

I do not agree, however.

What does it mean to be a good poet?

When he started at Harvard at the age of sixteen, he didn't get a fly into Thoreau's mouth. When he left, he read in five languages the top writers. And when he returned to Concorde, Ralph turned to transcendentalism by the poet's hand Waldo Emerson. Emerson said he had a ray of heaven with him and that he had to deal with life in an elevated and laborious manner. He retired. He premiered one of his diaries: “1 April. With the sun,/ has restarted all nature,(…) with the sun and the April”.

And as he walked like this, consecrated to contemplation, he knew human nature. The man is also a wolf, he understood it perfectly: he committed himself to abolition, he made the tax objection. He combined the theories of civil disobedience, the pleasure of leaving everything and fishing on the lake. Thoreau thus became the classical source of many subsequent writers, exponents of a thought stream that seeks peace in the peace of nature. I've prayed for Rexroth. I think Snyder is more than anyone else. I dream of Artze.

Thoreau was therefore a good poet. But, of course, poetry has to be searched throughout her entire work, or rather in her example: “To feel broad, to understand broadly, to broadly express the beauty of nature,/ is the only task of poetry.” Antonio Casado da Rocha has given us a beautiful book, so what you have at your disposal on Booktegi with comments.