This is a book to keep by your bedside table. Pablo Neruda's poems are passionate, relevant, timeless. It's impossible to fall out of love with the emotions and pictures he paints with his words. This book is excellent for inspiration and reflection and may serve as a source of wisdom. Give it as a gift to anyone who has passion for the pure artistry of the poetic word.

The imagery is both inspiring and devastating. The book was released by Ferlinghetti's "City Lights Books" in celebration of the centennial of Neruda's birth. The poems are presented in the original Spanish side-by-side with translations by a team of translators. It's a celebration of rich metaphor.

Here is my favorite verse, from the poem "I don't love you as if you were a rose":

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close with my dreams."

"Rough and wild vessel: deserted peaks, scars, rugged marks"...Inexhaustible and powerful.

But if you think that Neruda is all about Macchu Picchu, Chile, blood of his people, please do yourself a favor and reach for his odes and sonnets.

There is no one like Neruda, particularly in the stunning imagery of the early poems. Nine translators are featured in this selection of Neruda’s work, Mark Eisner, John Felstiner, Forrest Gander, Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, Stephen Kessler, Stephen Mitchell and Alastair Reid. Rather than quote poems in their entirety (as they deserve to be read) I’ll note just a few of the images that resonated for me. “death’s arrival on the ox’s tongue” “come near with an apple and a horse,/because there in lies a dark living room and a shattered candelabrum,/a few bent chairs waiting on winter,/and a dove, dead, with a number.” “when the furious condor, like a horseshoe of red-cased wings/hammers my temples in the order of flight” “let us spread great tablecloths,/put salt in the lakes of the world,/set up planetary bakeries,/tables with strawberries in snow,/and a plate like the moon itself/from which we can all eat.” “death in the bedsteads:/in the slow mattresses, in the black blankets/death stretches out like a clothesline, and then suddenly blows:/blows a dark sound that swells the sheets/and beds are sailing into a harbor/where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.” Well, what can one say or do other than bow to his genius.

Profundo

Genius. Every word perfect, but more importantly, his poetry has a flow that leaves me gasping at the end of each poem, raised up by each conclusion. He seems as much a composer as a poet with the swell of each poetic melody creating tears, joy, an unexpected hitch in the throat.

He captures fundamental insights with brilliance. Goodread readers will enjoy Ode to the Book (II) which starts:

"Book,
beautiful
book,
miniscule forest,
leaf
after leaf
your paper
smells
of the elements,

Il Pueblo had me in tears as did Il Fugitivo and I Explain Some Things. Too many great poems to mention.

"...to whomever without knowing it has waited for me,
I belong and recognize and sing."

For my food justice blog, I add The Great Tablecloth which ends with:
"Hunger feels like pincers,
like the bit of crabs,
it burns, burns and has no fire.
Hunger is a cold fire.
Let us sit down soon to eat
with all those who haven't eaten;
let us spread great tablecloths,
put salt in the lakes of the world,
set up planetary bakeries,
tables with strawberries in snow,
and a plate like the moon itself
from which we can all eat.

For now I ask no more
than the justice of eating."

Forget his politics, they are irrelevant in the context of the literary value of this incredible poet. Neruda's poems are like no other. Nobody is capable of such sensuality through poetry, everything he writes evokes a visceral reaction whilst maintaining a sort of unattainable beauty. Nature, women and love are interchangeable throughout. Unfortunately the poem translations into English lose some of the 'Neruda' about them. Read in Spanish if you can.

sigh

I believe that death's song is the colour of wet violets,
violets accustomed to the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death is green,
with the sharp wetness of the leaf of a violet,
and its serious colour of wintry impatience.

wow.
I'm not sure I can say much more. I brought this on a whim and keep picking it up, delving through it and spending so long just going over and over the same poems. Each time I read them I find something different, something beautiful and sad and mind blowing.
I've never enjoyed poetry quite like this before. The only close thing I can think of is my love of Paradise Lost and that's because it was explained to me, I analysed that. This I can pick up and just enjoy.
Language used in this way is just so beautiful.
If you like any form of romance I dare you not to love Neruda and his poems.
This copy has spanish on one side and the translated English on the other so you can enjoy both. Despite my conversational spanish only, I love to say my favourite lines out loud in spanish, they sound gorgeous.
Some of them stay with me and are just perfect:

love is so short, and forgetting so long

just wow. I wish I had a photographic memory so I could memorise some of these all the way through. Though I'd probably quote them all the time and be really pretentious, but god I wish people spoke like this.
Also, he wrote so many poems there just isn't space in one anthology for them all... Some other famous ones are missing which is sad. I may have to buy another anthology of his. But this has a lovely selection, talking about love, death, Chile, revolution, freedom - so much much.

Like this for instance:

That's why Monday burns like Kerosene,
when it sees me show up with my mugshot face,
and it shrieks on its way like a wounded wheel,
trailing hot bloody footprints into the night.

I can't even explain it. I'm not even sure what it means. It just makes me feel so strongly. The emotions I get from this are astounding.
This is some of the most romantic and moving, and sexual and crazy and beautiful poetry I've ever read.
It was like 6 pounds from Amazon. Bargain. Go buy it.

This is my first time reading Neruda, having only read a snippet of a poem in another work (which was beautiful and sent me in search of more). It is definitely a collection worthy of rereading. There is no way to absorb it in only one, or even two or three, readings. I found myself drawn to the poems about life and love. The next collection I delve into will most definitely be his love poems, probably the sonnet collection. I'm sure they lose something in translation, and not every poem was one that I connected with, but the ones that I did were worth the time spent finding them.

Nobody knows about love, writes about love, like Pablo Neruda. What can I say about him that would ever be enough?