I was inspired to pick up this collection when Lobizona included a snippet of Pablo Neruda's poetry, translated to English by Nathaniel Tarn:

Debajo de tu piel vive la luna.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Come on, how beautiful is that? The Spanish version is already a lovely thought in and out of itself, but Tarn spun the translation into a work of art unto itself. He makes a real craft of translation.

So yeah, I came here specifically for Nathaniel Tarn. And his translations did not let me down once. I would love to teach his translation of "I'm Explaining a Few Things" (because again, what a stunning translation, and also because Neruda writes a damn good war poem). And there's this one stanza from "Furies and Sufferings" that I cannot get out of my head, Tarn translated it that well:

Enemiga, enemiga / es posible que el amor haya caído al polvo / y no haya sino carne y huesos velozmente adorados / mientras el fuego se consume / y los caballos vestidos de rojo galopan al infierno?

Enemy, my enemy / has love fallen to dust / and will nothing do save flesh and bone furiously adored / while the fire devours itself / and the red-harnessed horses rush into hell?

Ugh. I'm in love. Unfortunately, a lot of the others poems by the other translators fell flat to me. I started to skip around a bit towards the end when Tarn's poems became few and far between. This isn't to say that the other translators did a poor job. In fact, their translations are still strong all things considered. It's just very difficult to show them the same level of admiration when they're stacked up against Tarn's translative artistry. I feel like I'm best able to see Neruda's vision through Tarn's translations because Tarn writes them as if they'd been in English the whole time; the other translators seem to do a more literal job of translating, so that I get the word for word experience of Neruda's poetry rather than the lyrical and atmospheric experience. And at the end of the day, I will always favor a poem's atmosphere.

As it went on, I enjoyed it more and more (so I found the later work the best). I began to appreciate the tone of joy and appreciation and wonder (on the most part), as opposed to get complacent of shallowness. Neruda rejoices in poetry as sharing, as evidence of, as well as the practice of, comradeship. He fights for the little guy. He fights for love and our relationships to people and to our own human nature.

“I got very close to hatred:
Those cold shivers are a menace,
Those dizzy fantasies,
Hate is like a swordfish,
Working through water invisibly
And then you see it coming
With blood along it’s blade,
But transparency disarms it.”

“Beautiful nude:
Equally beautiful
Your feet
Arched by a primeval tap
Of wind or sound;
Your ears
Small shells
Of the splendid American sea;
Your breast
Of level platitude full-
Filled by living light;
Your flying eyelids of wheat
Revealing
Or enclosing
The two deep countries of your eyes.”

Reading it through twice was not enough. I will start it from the beginning again.