Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

When it comes to poetry, my interest is centered on the British Romantic era, the only exception being epic poetry. Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair took me completely by surprise. I was simply blown away. I never thought I could find such lyrical beauty in 20th-century poetry, but I was wrong, and Neruda proved me wrong.

This collection has some of the best love poems that I have ever read. Blending nature and nature's greatest creation - the woman, in perfect harmony, Neruda's lyrical genius highlights love, sensuality, solitude, grief, and loss.

Every Day You Play celebrates love and sensuality.
"Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit every day between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one you bring me honeysuckle
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me
my savage solitary soul my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains
bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."

In Leaning into the Afternoon, Neruda speaks of solitude in heartbreaking beauty.
"Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges."

Loss and Grief are best captured in The Song of Despair

"The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express,
in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitterwell.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything.
Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure.
Oh abandoned one!"

In Neruda's time, these sensual utterances were regarded as too vulgar for social sensitivity, but it is not a secret that he influenced the later writers with his openness, for his poetry is no objective idolization of love and beauty, but subjective experience - his own feelings and emotions. And that gives Neruda, authenticity, and also a sense of realism. That is why these poems resonate so much with the readers.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

This is my first experience reading Neruda, and I must say I was quite taken by it. My only issue is that, read as a whole, some of the issues and imagery tend to become a tad repetitive. But there is a definite sense of a progression in terms of a love affair, culminating in the woefully bleak ‘The Song of Despair’.

The Penguin Classics edition is a wonderful object, from the minimalist cover to the inclusion of the original Spanish text for each poem and Picasso illustrations. The Spanish verses seem so minimalist compared to the English, that one can only wonder at how delicate the translation process must have been.

Cristina Garcia reminds us in her excellent introduction that surrealism exploded onto the scene at the same time that this collection saw the light of day. Neruda’s English contemporaries at the time included T.S. Eliot (The Wasteland, 1922), Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. Writers from other “cultural traditions and literary genres” included James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf.

Reading this made me curious to find out more about Neruda’s life, so I managed to hunt down a copy of the 2016 movie ‘Neruda’, directed by Pablo Larraín and starring Luis Gnecco as the poet and Gael Garcia Bernal as Oscar Peluchonneau. Of course, Neruda was also famously referenced in the 1994 comedy-drama ‘Il Postino’.

It is great that Neruda’s legacy is alive and well, and that Latin American poetry itself continues to be recognised both for its innovation and emotional complexity.

"Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day. "

It was glorious one ! ! !
As I had seen recently in some friend's review and Crossing my other books, I've chosen to read it first which had been waiting for me so long in my shelf.
Well, It's classic poetry with all the poetic devices were glittering in so wonderful form of words along in thread of rhythmic poetry. However, I'm keen reader of profound and deeply influenced kind of poetry, This book was given me same taste for me. I'm glad and ecastic with motion of calm words of poet.

Some of Great lines-
*The numberless heart of the wind beating
above our loving silence.
Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees
like a language full of wars and songs.

*There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

*I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe ! 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

*Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird,
something of anguish and oblivion

*Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves, your parallel body yields to my arms like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul, quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.

"Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that beats on your marine eyes."

"The water walks barefoot in the wet streets.
From that tree the leaves complain as though they were sick"

*So that 'You Will Hear Me
But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes

"Amé desde hace tiempo tu cuerpo de nácar soleado".
3.5

"Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues."

An enduring collection of exquisite verses. Even though translated from Spanish, these words sound eloquent and lyrical.

Simple, sensual, beautiful words filled with tenderness and a vivid imagination.

"I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains,
bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic basket of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."

Lush, rich, intense words filled with reverence and longing.

"As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence"

Passionate, evocative, haunting words filled with a burning desperation.

"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 is the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her."

The song of despair at the end is an assortment of heart breaking, soul shattering words that speak of a sizzling fiery torment.

"The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!"

It is no wonder Pablo Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

However, what did not appeal to me was the objectification of women. I found it rather annoying.

Apart from that, this is a lovely collection of elegant and intimate poems.

Poems that I love
The Cataract of Lodore
BY ROBERT SOUTHEY

 From its sources which well

 In the tarn on the fell;

 From its fountains

 In the mountains,

 Its rills and its gills;

 Through moss and through brake,

 It runs and it creeps

 For a while, till it sleeps

 In its own little lake.

 And thence at departing,

 Awakening and starting,

 It runs through the reeds,

 And away it proceeds,

 Through meadow and glade,

 In sun and in shade,

 And through the wood-shelter,

 Among crags in its flurry,

 Helter-skelter,

 Hurry-skurry.

 Here it comes sparkling,

 And there it lies darkling;

 Now smoking and frothing

 Its tumult and wrath in,

 Till, in this rapid race

 On which it is bent,

 It reaches the place

 Of its steep descent.

 

 The cataract strong

 Then plunges along,

 Striking and raging

 

 As if a war raging

 Its caverns and rocks among;

 Rising and leaping,

 Sinking and creeping,

 Swelling and sweeping,

 Showering and springing,

 Flying and flinging,

 Writhing and ringing,

 Eddying and whisking,

 Spouting and frisking,

 Turning and twisting,

 Around and around

 With endless rebound:

 Smiting and fighting,

 A sight to delight in;

 Confounding, astounding,

 Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.

 
Collecting, projecting,

 Receding and speeding,

 And shocking and rocking,

 And darting and parting,

 And threading and spreading,

 And whizzing and hissing,

 And dripping and skipping,

 And hitting and splitting,

 And shining and twining,

 And rattling and battling,

 And shaking and quaking,

 And pouring and roaring,

 And waving and raving,

 And tossing and crossing,

 And flowing and going,

 And running and stunning,

 And foaming and roaming,

 And dinning and spinning,

 And dropping and hopping,

 And working and jerking,

 And guggling and struggling,

 And heaving and cleaving,

 And moaning and groaning;

 And glittering and frittering,

 And gathering and feathering,

 And whitening and brightening,

 And quivering and shivering,

 And hurrying and skurrying,

 And thundering and floundering;

  Dividing and gliding and sliding,

 And falling and brawling and sprawling,

 And driving and riving and striving,

 And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,

 And sounding and bounding and rounding,

 And bubbling and troubling and doubling,

 And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,

 And clattering and battering and shattering;

 Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,

 Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,

 Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,

 Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,


 And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,

 And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,

 And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,

 And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,

 And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,

 And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;

 And so never ending, but always descending,

 Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending

 All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar, -

 And this way the water comes down at Lodore.



Continuities

Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892

 Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form—no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires, The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.


Each Note by Rumi

Advice doesn’t help lovers!
They’re not the kind of mountain stream
you can build a dam across.

An intellectual doesn’t know
what the drunk is feeling!

Don’t try to figure
what those lost inside love
will do next!

Someone in charge would give up all his power,
if he caught one whiff of the wine-musk
from the room where the lovers
are doing who-knows-what!

One of them tries to dig a hole through a mountain.
One flees from academic honors.
One laughs at famous mustaches!

Life freezes if it doesn’t get a taste
of this almond cake.
The stars come up spinning
every night, bewildered in love.
They’d grow tired
with that revolving, if they weren’t.
They’d say,
“How long do we have to do this!”

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing-pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don’t try to end it.
Be your note.
I’ll show you how it’s enough.

Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes!
Sing loud!


Ok the reason for showing these to start my 'review' of Pablo Nerudas 20 poems....(which I chose to read for the Valentine's day romantic challenge that the group Reading for pleasure are hosting) is to show that I do indeed like poetry in it's many guises. I have numerous volumes on my bookcase including obviously Rumi, Whitman and Southey but also Wordsworth, Yeats, Emily Bronte and Sylvia Plath oh and Margaret Atwood. So I'm not a novice, although I do not profess to be proficient.
I realise poetry is subjective and that my idea of beautiful, lyrical, emotive, rousing, passionate poetry is going to be different from other peoples but .. this book had me recoiling at the metaphors used for female body parts and calling his lover a toy doll, this is not love, it's the thoughts of a teenage boy whose bed sheets need washing in the morning!!!
I know this is not the general consensus when it comes to this book but for me poems, the ones I love, get into your soul and these didn't work for me at all.
Very disappointed. 1*

Pablo Neruda is undoubtedly one of the major authors in Spanish language and "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" is for me his best work. I encourage all those who haven't read it yet to do it and especially to all those readers who begin to read in Spanish!

Spanish version:
Pablo Neruda es din duda uno de los grandes referentes en lengua española y "Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada" es para mí su mejor obra. Animo a todos los que no la hayáis leído a hacerlo y sobretodo a todos aquellos lectores que empiezan a leer en español!

The 'love poems' are nevertheless as yet laden with 'despair.' There are two voices here--one laments her absence, whereas the other celebrates her presence. The celebration of the lover is omnipresent in the texts--constant reference to the beloved.

The lament of the distant lover is more rare, but constant--from the beginning, the speaker says that "to survive myself I forge you like a weapon" (I.7), even so constructing her with "eyes of absence" (I.11). His words "peopled the solitude that you occupy" (IV.14). In the "highest blaze my solitude lengthens" (VII.3), signalling "across your absent eyes" (VII.5). He specifies at one point "the solitude from which you are absent" (VIII.15). She will "undermine the horizon with [her] absence" (XII.7); his "solitude crossed with dream and with silence" (XIII.10).

The two threads merge when he marks out an exorbitant desire: "I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent, / and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you" (XV.1-2). It is as though the significant act for the speaker is to lament the absence of the beloved--to forge her like a weapon against his solitude--but to do so he needs first the solitude, which her presence, however pleasant, ultimately disrupts. We know this because "your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing" (XVII.9)--commodity fetishism applied to human persons, whose bodies become fungible in their distance, maybe.

Recommended for those in the black solitude of the islands.