Ledo Ivo
Ledo Ivo (1924–2012) was a Brazilian journalist, poet, novelist, and essayist. He was born in Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil as the son of Floriano and Euridice Placido de Araujo Ivo. He later married Maria Leda Sarmento de Medeiros and fathered Patricia, Maria da Graca and Goncalo. Ivo’s first volume of poems—As Imaginações—granted him national recognition in 1944. Since then he has written several other works of poetry including Ode and Elegy, Ode to Twilight, Birth of the Sonnet, Language, and The Common Soldier. His novels include Alliances, The Road without Adventure, and The Death of Brazil. Early in Ivo’s career he rejected the stylistic innovations of modernism in favor of classical forms and rhythms, yet his poetic creations exhibit a broad range of themes in language. Ivo once said: “I live by writing, but I sometimes envy people who live their lives remote from art, distanced from the words and materials which engender the creation of poetry—people who are simply absorbed by the very pattern of life.”