Arnaldo Forte

Arnaldo Forte was a Portuguese poet best known today for 13 Sonetos, a collection first published in Lisbon in 1921 and later preserved by Project Gutenberg. The book presents him as a writer deeply drawn to lyric poetry and especially to the sonnet form.

The front matter of 13 Sonetos also points to two earlier books, Cinzas (1908) and Luar d'Outono (1912), suggesting that he had been publishing poetry for at least the early decades of the 20th century. A later book, Tunis... A Noiva do Mar: Sonetos, appeared in 1947, which hints at a career that stretched over many years.

Reliable biographical details about his life are hard to confirm from the sources available here, so it is safest to let the poems speak first. From the work that is easy to verify, Forte comes across as a poet of feeling and form, writing with tenderness, melancholy, and a clear affection for the sound and structure of traditional verse.