Not quite enough of the love poems for this collection to include all my favourites (when I was studying this I borrowed a blissful old collection from the library...it had tonnes in it, but sadly would have been very expensive and is now out of print) but still, that makes it a very well-rounded selection. Translations are fantastic (bearing well in mind they're translations). Also just a nice book, nice size, nice print, lots of space around the words - perfect for reading poetry and imagining all the stunning imagery.

This book serves as my introduction to Pablo Neruda.

Here we have 50 poems selected and translated from 13 of his books of poetry, three of which were posthumously published. These are chronologically arranged by original publication date across 198 pages divided between the original Chilean Spanish poems on 99 left facing pages and their English translations on 99 right facing pages. Though I do not speak or read Spanish, I did find I was able to use the originals along with Google Translate to clear up confusion about some of the wording and imagery I encountered. I was surprised to find that there is very nearly a one to one correlation of lines between the original Spanish and the English translations.

Eight translators contributed to this volume. Though they are already listed among the authors, I thought it might be nice to provide a breakdown by order of total contributions. 18 translations are contributed by Mark Eisner, the editor; 11 by Alastair Reid, Scottish poet and scholar of South American literature; 6 each by Forrest Gander and Stephen Kessler, both American poets; 3 each by Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, and Stephen Mitchell, American poet; 2 by Jack Hirschman, American poet and essayist; and 1 by John Felstiner, American literary critic and poet. Felstiner, Kessler and Mitchell are shown to have collaborated with Eisner on a number of his contributions.

Though I can’t say I “really liked it” (4 stars), I do feel pretty comfortable with rating this book at three stars (“liked it”). With 2 stars indicating “It was okay,” my appreciation dial probably lands closer to 2.75 stars, which rounds easily up to 3 stars.

I’m a careful, deliberate reader who tries to make a habit of reading every poem at least twice. The first read gives me an overview and cues me to look up and familiarize myself any unfamiliar words and/or references. The second read allows the words, imagery, metaphor and meaning to sink in more deeply. The poems I enjoyed, I really enjoyed. I found myself bookmarking 12 titles as I read, which is around a fifth of the content. So I think that’s pretty good for me. While most of the other poems did contain at least one image, metaphor or turn of phrase that leapt out at me, as a whole they left me more than a little flat, either because they seemed to ramble on without direction or focus or because they went so overboard with imagery and metaphor that it began to feel like Neruda was just pulling nouns, verbs and adjectives out of a hat and plugging them in wherever.

Here are a few of the titles I enjoyed along with an excerpt and a few thoughts:

“The Phantom of the Cargo Ship” (tr. Kessler)

…
He watches with his colorless, sightless eyes,
slowly, and floats past trembling, shadowless, not present:
sounds wrinkle him, things pass through him,
his transparency gives a glow to the dirty chairs.
…
The phantom watches the ocean with his eyeless face:
the circle of the day, the coughing of the ship, a bird
in the round and lonely equation of space,
and he goes down again into the life of the ship
tripping over dead time and weathered wood,
slipping through the cabins and the black galleys,
with their heavy air and atmosphere and desolated space.

This three page poem is by far my favorite piece of writing in the book. As an animist poet myself who has explored the subject of ghosts in his own writing, I found the entire poem to be overflowing with animistic perspectives and principles. This is not something I get to see very often in the work of any poet. Aside from this, the play of imagery and metaphor are just plain gorgeous. This qualifies to my mind as an extremely beautiful piece of writing. Though I bookmarked 11 other titles, none of them came close to the beauty and power of this piece for me.

“Heights of Macchu Picchu: XII” (tr. Eisner)

…
Show me your blood and your furrow,
say to me: here I was punished
because the gem didn’t shine or the earth
didn’t deliver the stone or the grain on time:
point out to me the rock on which you fell
and the wood on which they crucified you,
burn the ancient flints bright for me,
the ancient lamps, the lashing whips
stuck for centuries to your wounds
and the axes brilliant with bloodstain.
I come to speak through your dead mouth.
…

Speaking for the dead, the abused, the enslaved. Because I seek context as I read, I found myself reading up on Neruda himself. He was very much a champion of the people, the worker, the downtrodden. In this respect I can see him in much the way I see Robert Service. Here he sees them in every nuance of this sacred place, those who built it, those who were punished for the slightest error, those who were thrown from cliffs or impaled on trees. This shows another, animistic side to Neruda that I found I could appreciate.

“Those Lives” (tr. Reid)

…
If I remember anything in my life,
it was an afternoon in India, on the banks of a river.
They were burning a woman of flesh and bone
and I didn’t know if what came from the sarcophagus
was soul or smoke,
until there was neither woman nor fire
nor coffin nor ash. It was late,
and only the night, the water, the river, the darkness
lived on in that death.

I missed my subway stop for this book--that's how you know it's good. Reading poetry in Spanish is such an experience, and Neruda's work really is special. He's one of my favorites! Ty Gael for giving this to me.

“As it to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her,
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.”

Like most poems and poetry collections, this one had pieces that spoke directly to me and others that went right over my head. The translations side by side in English and Spanish were a great visual, and I enjoyed opening myself up to the mind and work of a poet who I was mostly unfamiliar with before. This collection has left me with a long list of poems I can't wait to revisit.

I don't have this book, but I've read most of the poems online. And let me tell you, they are gorgeous poems. Very descriptive and raw. Love. Love. Love.

3,5 stars

This is the first book of poetry I´ve ever read from cover to cover in my life. I´ve always felt drawn to Pablo Neruda´s poetry. Probably because I´ve lived in Chile. But there was some good stuff in this collection!

Neruda is a master at capturing feelings of nostalgia and remembrance of times gone-by. I want this particular ditty on my gravestone/urn:

It's the hour
when leaves fall, triturated
across the ground, when
out of being and unbeing they return to their source,
their gold and green stripped away
until they've gone to root again
and again, undone and reborn,
they lift their heads into spring.

No rating. I think I'm deficient somehow--I don't know how to rate poetry? Any poetry I encounter that isn't just kind of wincingly bad or juvenile seems to be an entire world of its own, explorable, vast, fertile, incomparable. Neruda's is certainly such a world.

عشق من، ما همدیگر را تشنه یافتیم
و سر کشیدیم هر آنچه که آب بود و خون،
ما همدیگر را گرسنه یافتیم و یکدیگر را به دندان کشیدیم
آنگونه که آتش می کند و زخم بر تنمان می گذارد.
اما در انتظار من بمان، شیرینی خود را برایم نگهدار.
من نیز به تو
گل سرخی خواهم داد.

Neruda has a way of combining the physical and the ethereal, which results in a lovely nuanced poetry.

Pablo Neruda is one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century and in this particular collection of his work, he showcases that through and through. Neruda’s usage of metaphors throughout his work is awe inspiring but it ranges from simple basic concepts to more advanced usages that require advance knowledge over the symbolism that he is attempting to enact in the reader's emotions. You see the simplistic metaphor usage in “I Can Write The Saddest Verses” where the meaning of the piece is quite clear in that he speaks of a lost love. In contrast to “Dead Gallop” for example that doesn't necessarily give its point quite as directly as the latter did. The reader then must utilize context clues and pick up on the speaker’s usage of simile to compare what you would think to be uncomparable things.
Neruda has a way to consistently leave people in a daze with his words. He is able to invoke powerful emotions with the pen so much that you can picture clearly what he is saying. Out of this collection my personal favorite is “I Can Write the Saddest Verse”. It brings up images of pain and loss to me that I can easily relate to.
tThis is still the definitive collection of Neruda’s work. Here he showcases his diverse talents and his mastery of the manipulation of emotions. My only real disappointment comes from the lack of my favorite piece of his “And Because Love Battles”. Other than this small nit picking item this is an excellent collection. As well as a great way for people who may not have read Neruda’s work before to get in to.



Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her void. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.