Introduction1How to Strangle a Swan: Contradictions of Modernity in Latin America2Out of the Prison of Language: The Avant Garde and the First Crisis of the New World3The Peanut-eating Poet: Brazilian Modernism4Awakenings: The Slow Return to the Real5The Feeling of the World: Poet and Society under Vargas6Retreats and Rediscoveries: Public and Private Voices of the Forties and Fifties7The Architects of Construction: Poetry and the Politics of Development in Post-war Brazil8Speaking Aloud: The Re-entry into History9Voices from the Silence: Poetry and Dictatorship in Brazil10Conclusion: Against ExileNotesBibliographyIndex