product of the poet's patient and lucid work.<ref>A poesia não é fruto de inspiração em razão do sentimento”, mas o “fruto do trabalho paciente e lúcido do poeta”. Quoted in: http://www.reciclazaro.org.br/conheca-a-historia-do-poeta-brasileiro-joao-cabral-de-melo-neto/</ref>}} The image of an engineer designing a building, an epithet Melo Neto himself adopted, is often used to describe his poetry. From the start, his poetry was extraordinarily rich in imagery. Commenting Pedra do Sono, his first book, Antonio Candido, who noted his debt to cubism and surrealism, observed how his poems were composed from the accumulation of concrete and sensory images, using words in an almost pictorial manner. Quickly, however, he proved highly attentive to the social reality of his state. In O cão sem plumas (“A Dog without Feathers”)’, his first long poem, dated from 1950, he portrayed the lives of the destitute classes, who depended on the Capibaribe River, and described the toiling of the sugar-cane mill. Three years later, in O Rio (“The River”) he assumed the voice of the river, narrating in first-person its course and the villages and landscapes it crossed. Clarifying his debts to Melo Neto, Augusto de Campos has said: “One might say that he has no antecedents in Brazilian poetry, but his work has consequences. It is Concrete poetry that will sustain, continue, expand and broaden this poetic language that is not sentimental, but objective, a poetry of concretude, a critical poetry, as João's poetry is.” Works Poetry 1942: Pedra do Sono (Slumber Stone) 1943: Os Três Mal-Amados (The Three Unloved) 1945: O Engenheiro (The Engineer) 1947: Psicologia da Composição com a Fábula de Anfion e Antiode (Psychology of Composition with the Fable of Amphion and Anti-Ode) 1950: O Cão sem Plumas (The Dog without Feathers) 1953: O Rio ou Relação da Viagem que Faz o Capibaribe de Sua Nascente à Cidade do Recife (The River or On the Course of the Capibaribe River from Its Source to the City of Recife) 1960: Dois Parlamentos (Two Parliaments) 1960: Quaderna 1966: A Educação pela Pedra (Education by the Stone) 1975: Museu de Tudo (Museum of Everything) 1980: A Escola das Facas (The School of the Knives) 1985: Agrestes 1987: Crime na Calle Relator (Crime in Relator Street) 1990: Primeiros Poemas (First Poems) 1990: Sevilha Andando (Walking around Seville) Autos 1955: Morte e Vida Severina (translated in part by Elizabeth Bishop as Life and Death of a Severino) 1984: Auto do Frade