Nunca me cansaré de leer Pablo Neruda y de sentir y vivir con su poesía. Leer Pablo Neruda es como leer la vida. Te toca, te provoca, te inspira, y te da respiración. Es como si tuviera una otra vida, lejos de aquí, con otros pensamientos, no obstante los mismos todo el tiempo. Pablo Neruda siempre es necesario para vivir y para tener la fuerza para seguir, para luchar. Una poesía simple, preciosa, divina,.. personal. "Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma / emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía." Sencillo pero... impresionante.

You can read my review here: http://embracingmybooks.blogspot.be/2...

Tra tanto fare e disfare, dentro e fuori, fortunatamente ho letto.
Ed è stato bellissimo, tutto, ma soprattutto da pagina 97, ‘Que despierte el Lenador' (Si svegli il Tagliaboschi) e ciascuno veda chi egli possa essere.
Ho cominciato bene questo anno, con canti che sono già piccoli poemi, nenie, preghiere, grida di guerra e inni alla Vita, politica e morte, amore e ancora, sempre vità. E’ bello sapere che nella penna di un Poeta anni di Storia scorrono, sul bianco di un foglio o di anima in ascolto.
Un Poeta sa.

I seem to have knack for buying the works of writers before certain details of their lives become known and then having to decide if I will read them or not. I had this volume of poetry by Neruda before I heard that he has been accused of a rape occurring in the 1920s. I would have been less likely to read him if his offense occurred often or repeated, but I am not here to make excuses. I can understand deciding not to read this.

Since I have owned this anyway, I have read it anyway, and it's a big book of poetry. I have spent a few months going through it. I like the poetry, especially the elegies and odes and some of the political poems. (Richard Nixon is a target.) The level of difficulty varies; Neruda does like to blend his symbols and metaphors.

It was really wonderful to reread some of these stellar poems. This is what poetry should be. It adds to your life and you feel the vibrancy.

You could say that poets like Pablo Neruda set a standard of how poetry can be.

As a passionate lover of poetry, "The Poetry of Pablo Neruda" captivated my heart ❤️

I am kind of confused by Goodreads right now. The book I read, by René de Costa, an academic text dividing Neruda's life and poetry into chapters, is listed as a separate edition of a collection of the man's entire work?

... Anyway ... The book *I* read was interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't love both Neruda and literary analysis. It took me forever to get through, but I'd say it was worth it just to learn more about the man's politics, and to realize that almost all of the stuff I have read by him comes from the same period of his writing that is really only a small part of his entire career. Perhaps unsurprising, but interesting nonetheless.

A pesar de la inmensa influencia de Neruda en la poesía latinoamericana, siempre he sentido que su obra, en gran parte, carece de la sutileza y la moderación que hacen que la poesía realmente resuene a nivel emocional más profundo. En muchos de sus poemas, la intensidad de su lenguaje y su inclinación por lo épico a veces sofocan la autenticidad de la emoción. La constante idealización del amor y la naturaleza, en lugar de explorar sus matices y contradicciones, termina por restarle impacto a su poesía. Personalmente, me resulta difícil conectar con una poesía que parece más interesada en crear un espectáculo lírico que en reflejar la complejidad humana de una manera sincera.

Además, la forma en que Neruda trata a las mujeres en su poesía me parece desalentadora y poco inspiradora. Su tendencia a cosificar a las mujeres como meros objetos de deseo erosiona la profundidad de su obra y la hace parecer anacrónica y, en algunos casos, alienante. Aunque reconozco la grandeza histórica de Neruda, creo que su poesía, a menudo, falla en capturar la experiencia humana con la honestidad y complejidad que muchos otros poetas logran con mayor sutileza.

WHAT EVERY EDUCATED CITIZEN OF THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW IN THE 21ST CENTURY: INTRODUCTION TO LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE---GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ, JORGE LUIS BORGES, OCTAVIO PAZ, PABLO NERUDA, MARIO VARGAS LLOSA ----FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF




Latin American writers have always been a hybrid and cosmopolitan lot----on the one hand part of the Western world and drawing their heritage, like all Western writers from the legacy of Classical Greece and the Latin masters of Rome, the Biblical and Christian heritage, and the heritage in particular of Spanish and Portuguese literature, of Cervantes and Camoes; the classical joke of ‘Modernismo” being that Latin American literature had evolved beyond its national and colonial origins to embrace a true regional culture, and that the cultural capital of this “Latin America” was Paris!---the place where almost every Latin American writer, artist, thinker or revolutionary would make pilgrimage to take part in the currents of the Western world.

On the other hand, they have by necessity been rooted in the history, geography and milieu of "The New World," with reference to their Pre-Columbian heritage and the various sub-cultures of their peoples, despite the fact that many or most of them, just like North Americans, are immigrants or descendents from Europe itself---not only from colonial Spain and Portugal, but from Italy, Ireland, Britain, Germany---even Japan and the Middle-East and really, like the USA to the north, and increasingly from all of the countries of the world to a greater or lesser extent. Recall the joke of Borges---that the typical Argentine was an Italian, speaking Spanish, who thinks he is an Englishman! So in fact Latin American literature, just like ‘American’ or North American literature, has always been a part of both Western Literature and of World Literature, consciously or unconsciously.

If we ask who are the Latin American “Greats” who have made a global impact and contribution to World Literature as a whole beyond the local milieu of their origins, then many of the names are quite obvious and familiar: Above all Borges, whose "Ficciones" and philosophical, bizarre and perplexing stories and exploratory non-linear modes of narrative are modernist classics the world over, such as “The Garden of the Forking Paths.” Then of course, there are the Nobel Prize winners, including many of the “El Boom” period with its “Lo real Maravilloso”---Magical Realism----of which Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s "Cien anos de soledad"--"The Hundred Years of Solitude" is foremost. The Nobel Prize, and perhaps the Neustadt, are prima facie evidence of global contribution and thus we would have to include the great lyric poet Pablo Neruda of Chile, Octavio Paz of Mexico, Asturias of Guatemala, and Gabriela Mistral of Chile. Overall I would have to say the indisputable “Big Three” who have had a global impact as part of World Literature over the last century would be Borges, Neruda, and Garcia Marquez.





THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE





PRE-COLUMBIAN ORATURE AND LITERATURE


Yet obviously it would be a travesty to think of Latin America’s contribution to world literature only in terms of a hagiographic handful of beatified ‘Greats.’ The major contributors to world culture from Latin America go far beyond them. Of the Pre-Columbian heritage, we are hampered by the fact that many of the Indian or American peoples had no written language and much of their rich oral language and traditions have been lost or deliberately suppressed. Yet some important works, such as the Mayan classic, the "Popul Vuh," or "Council Book," a kind of Mayan Bible recording their myths of origin, classical tales of mythic heroes such as the Celestial Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, and a kind of tribal history like the tribal history of the Old Testament, have come down to us, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, originally oral epics memorized by classical singers, then later transcribed into alphabetical script and recorded.

As in the case of the heritage of many African tribes, whose oral works and traditions are excluded from the definition of ‘Literature’ by the fact that they were composed orally rather than scripturally, we should keep an open mind and be ready to welcome “Orature” alongside “Literature” where the works are of significant quality and contribution, Other Pre-Columbian contributions might include the "Cantos Mexicanos," or "Songs of the Aztec Nobles," composed orally in Nahuatl and then later transcribed into Romanized script, Other borderline works of historical-cultural cum literary interest would include the Letters of Columbus to the King, and accounts of the conquest, such as Bernard Diaz del Castillo’s "True History of the Conquest of New Spain," and the related historical works of Bartholome de las Casas, “Apostle of the Indians.”

Once again, we get into a theoretical point----“What is Literature?”----are these works of historical interest only or are they of wider interest to the whole of humanity because of their universal quality? Sometimes it is hard to say at the borderline----because a work that is perhaps of only local historical interest may become ‘foundational’ to a whole culture. i.e.,may become a cultural ‘touchstone’ in ignorance of which one can never hope to understand the culture as a whole and the potentially universal ideas which grow out of it-----Perhaps the Old Testament being an example, originally only a self-centered tribalistic totem of a civilizationally marginal people, yet evolving to become the common ethical-religious and spiritual root of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic culture dominant in the world today. Yet certainly many parts of it also rise in their literary and artistic high quality to be undeniable parts of literature.
In the colonial period there are many worthy candidates for at least secondary status in the global canon: Juan Ruiz de Alarcon—playwright, and Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, a remarkable woman and Mexican nun, proto-feminist, and intellectual, noted for her plays, poetry and prose.



REVOLUTIONARY AND NATIONALISTIC LITERATURE OF THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY



From there we then reach the revolutionary period of the Post-Napoleonic rise of nationalisms and new Latin American nations attaining independency from Spain and Portugal, and going on to develop national literatures and cultures, all the while part of Western culture and literature and of a Pan-American Latin American culture and literature. Simon Bolivar, “El Liberator” was also a prolific writer, historical essayist and narrator of his military exploits. Similarly the Mexican Lizardi was an ardent propagandist and pamphleteer---a kind of Latin American Tom Paine, and also author of the supposed first Latin American novel, "The Itching Parrot." Jose Juaquim Olmedo celebrated the victories of Bolivar in his "La Victoria de Junin: Canto a Bolivar." As with Goethe, we have the coexistence of Classicism and Romanticism in such works as "En el teocalli de Cholula," (In the Temple Pyramid of Cholula) of the Cuban Jose Maria Heredia, probably the first appearance of the Romantic poem in Latin America. Preeminent at this time was probably Sarmiento of Argentina, notably his Romantic views in his Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants, a topic and theme to become widespread, even down to the time of Garcia Marques in his "Hundred Years of Solitude." Romanticism and nationalism were as common in Latin America as they were in Europe.




THE RISE OF "MODERNISMO" OR LATIN-AMERICAN MODERNISM



With the ending of the 19th Century brought on the period of “Modernismo,” which generally saw a break with the nationalistic expression of the prior generation, and writers immersed themselves in a world of artifice and imagination. These were the “Modernistas”, who believed, so it is commonly said, in the French Parnassian ideal of “l’art pour l’art---Art for art’s sake.” They wrote on rare and exotic themes and experimented with language and meter and symbolism. The literature became comparatively more Pan-Latin-American and less national-focused, as well as becoming more globalized. These included Najera, Silva, del Casal and Jose Marti but is generally accepted to have reached its peak with Nicaragua’s Ruben Dario.

Then coming down to the early 20th Century, Latin America, together with the rest of the Western world was taken up with a myriad of movements and literary trends. Three women poets distinguished themselves, Alfonsina Storni, Juana de Ibarborou, and notably the Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, known for their impassioned lyrics. The avant-garde in poetry included, Vincente Hudobro of Chile, Cesar Vallejo of Peru, Nobel winner Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina and Chile’s Pablo Neruda, also a Nobel Prize winner. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 also produced a flurry of revolutionary historical novels, such as "El Aguila y la Serpiente"—The Eagle and the Serpent—by Guzman, and "The Underdogs," by Azuela.

Around this time there was also a movement to represent the particular experience of the Indian or Native peoples, raised to the level of awareness of a protracted social problem, called the “indigenista” literature, with such writers as the Bolivian Alcides Arguedas, with his "Raza de bronce"---The Bronze Race, and "El Mundo es ancho y ajeno"---Broad and Alien is the World, by the Peruvian Ciro Alegria.



"EL BOOM" AND THE ASCENT OF MAGICAL REALISM & LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE ONTO THE WORLD STAGE FROM LTHE 1960'S


Of course coming down to the second half of the 20th Century again we have the great period of “El Boom” in which Latin American literature really is put on the map of globalized World Literature. The Boom reflected the economic development of Latin America and the assimilation of many of the global Modernist influences in form and technique, multiple points-of-view, stream of consciousness and internal monologue, non-linear innovative narrative styles, and other techniques, pioneered earlier in the century by Faulkner, Joyce, James and Woolf. We have Guatemala’s Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias, who combined mythological and social themes in such works as “El Presidente,” and "The Bejewelled Boy." Then we have Cuba’s Alejo Carpentier who captured the world of magic and superstition in "The Lost Steps" and other works, and who is generally credited with coining the term “Magic Realism.” Similarly, writers of the older generation carried their work to higher powers, with Borges, Ficciones, that like many of the Boom writers to follow, combined he real with the fantastic, exploring the outer borders and limits of human reason and reality. Borges younger Argentine comrade, Julio Cortazar, made history with his formalistic experimentation in non-linear narration, embodied in such works as "Rayuela"—Hopscotch. Mexican Carlos Fuentes, rose to global renown with his "La Muerte de Artemio Cruz"---The Death of Artemio Cruz, accompanied by other Latin American brothers in letters, such as Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru,--"La casa verde"--The Green House, and of course the now immortal Nobel laureate Garcia Marquez with his Hundred Years of Solitude.


POST-BOOM LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE


Of course everything under the sun has its day, and The Boom gradually receded. In the Post-Boom period, as is ever the case when we draw near the present things are more complicated and confused, and the broad lines are yet to be recognized. There seems to be a turn towards irony and popular genres, such as in the works of Manuel Puig. We even get “Anti-Boom Literature” such as Alberto Fuguet’s “McOndo” satirizing and puncturing the Magic Realism tradition which had now fallen to become an overworked cliché, every book seemingly mandatorily leading to the Latin American jungle where the real and the fantastic are effortlessly and seamlessly evoked, and the spectre of the fantastic and supernatural more and more idiotically is intruded into an unrelated reality, unmotivated by the narrative, themes and characters. We have the modern “Best Sellers” of Paolo Coelho and Elizabeth Allende, and post-Boom pastiches of Magic Realism, such as "Como agua para chocolate," by Laura Esquivel. Historical explorations such as Fernando Vallejo’s account of the violence surrounding the Medellin Cartel appeared, along with the “subaltern’’ and “Testimonio” wave, characterized by such figures as Rigoberta Menchu. In recent years Post-Boom literature has been led by the strong figure of Roberto Balano of Chile, with his treatment of the theme of exile, a common Latin-American fate, as exemplified by his own experience following the Pinochet overthrowal of the socialist Allende government of Chile.



GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ--FATHER OF MAGICAL REALISM & "EL BOOM"---1982 NOBEL LAUREATE


Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (b.1928) is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as "Gabo" throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is best known for his novels, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967), "Autumn of the Patriarch" (1975) and "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985) most of them expressing the theme of solitude.His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magic realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations.



JORGE LUIS BORGES---ARGENTINIAN LTERARY GRANDFATHER OF MAGICAL REALISM AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY GENRE


Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (1899-1986), known as Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator who was born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature". His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (El Aleph in Spanish) (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, animals, fictional writers, philosophy, religion and God. Borges' works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to both the fantasy and magical realism genres. The genre of magical realism reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the nineteenth century. Scholars have also suggested that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."


PABLO NERUDA--CHILEAN MASTER OF LATIN-AMERICAN LYRICAL POETRY AND 1971 NOBEL LAUREATE

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was the renown Chilean lyric poet, author erotically-charged love poems such as the 1924 collection "Twenty Love Poems" and the "Song of Despair," and the 1971 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda was a close advisor to socialist President Salvador Allende, a diplomat and Senator of the Communist Party. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."


OCTAVIO PAZ--MEXICAN

Octavio Paz Lozano (1914-1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. In addition to writing, in 1962 he was named Mexico's ambassador to India.
In 1965, he resigned from the diplomatic corps in protest of the Mexican government's massacre of student demonstrators in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. He won the 1977 Jerusalem Prize for literature on the theme of individual freedom. In 1980, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard, and in 1982, he won the Neustadt Prize. His early poetry was influenced by Marxism, surrealism, and existentialism, as well as religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. His poem, "Piedra de sol" ("Sunstone"), was praised as a "magnificent" example of surrealist poetry in the presentation speech of his Nobel Prize. His book-length essay, The Labyrinth of Solitude (El laberinto de la soledad), delves into the minds of his countrymen of Mexico, describing them as hidden behind masks of solitude. Due to their history, their identity is lost between a pre-Columbian and a Spanish culture, negating either.


MARIO VARGAS LLOSA--PERUVIAN NOBEL LAUREATE: FROM MODERNISM TO POST-MODERNISM


Mario Vargas Llosa (b.1936) is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as "Captain Pantoja and the Special Service" (1973/1978) and "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films. In his essays, Vargas Llosa has made many criticisms of nationalism in different parts of the world, among others in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. Another change over the course of his career has been a shift from a style and approach associated with literary modernism, to a sometimes playful postmodernism.


SPIRITUS MUNDI AND LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE


Latin-American Literature has deeply influenced my own work, particularly the contemporary and futurist modern epic Spiritus Mundi. The chapters "The Volcano's Underground" and "Teatro Magico" take place in Mexico City and feature the protagonist Robert Sartorius' surreal alcohol, drug and sex induced experiences as he contemplates suicide on his fiftieth birthday, which is also the Mexican Day of the Dead, including encounters with mythical figures from the Mayan Popul Vuh. It contains an extended embedded dialogue on the contributions of Latin-American Literature to World Literature. Spiritus Mundi also chronicles the Bono-Geldof-style "People Power" crusade to establish a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly as a globalized version of the European Parliament for global democracy, a theme of challenging the existing structures of power through reform or revolution common to Latin-American writing.


World Literature Forum invites you to check out the great Latin-American masterpieces of World Literature, and also the contemporary epic novel Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard. For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:


For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...


Robert Sheppard


Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG


Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved

Neruda's poetry is absolutely EXQUISITE. As this was the first ever poetry book I picked up, I wasn't sure how to go through the comprehensive collection, so I hopscotched and finished Residence, Canto General and Isla Negra in the end as these looked more serious or long sections. (And my mind always like it easy and short).
The following lines from "Ode to The Book I" strikes a chord in my heart and I believe Neruda lived what he wrote and he sure did love well.

n  n    I’ve learned to take life from life,
to love after a single kiss,
and I didn’t teach anything
to anyone except what I myself lived...n  n

One suggestion to anyone, new to poetry like me, is to first read the notes glossed by Stavans about each book before you read the poems. I realized it later, but it is useful to know about the undercurrent of each book. The editor has done a fantastic job and I would like to trust that nothing got lost in translation. Stavans has selected poems from 33 of Neruda's books (listed below). The books include poems on the common themes of love, sensuality, expressions on the art of loving and longing, despair, then, moves on to feelings of solitude and remoteness. The collection then takes us through some compelling, social and politically conscious poetry - and it's quite evident how Neruda was the poet of exile, the voice of displacement, the rebel poet. The book has memoirs of sorrowful and painful events - betrayal and bloodshed. In various poems, Neruda recalls the children being bit, burnt, chained etc and there have been expressions to suggest that ultimately, brutality extricates the sufferers from their body. Truly gut wrenching! Neruda is obviously filled with sadness and nostalgia in these poems where he talks about the war, racial conflicts and it's aftermath. Nevertheless, he goes on to create a sense of justice and beauty. In the subsequent books, the reader sees a return or restoration to his former self, and the poetry becomes more and more personal on the themes of lasting love, house, nature, birds, a healthy solitude, and looking at death with a kind of peace. It is completely enthralling to read how Neruda has embraced in his poetry, the myriad of materials of this universe - sand, salts, stones, waves, wasps etc. Love, beauty and empathy, however remains the leitmotifs of his poetry. (He even wrote poems titled "To a Poor Dead Man," and 'The Dog Dies.' Deep and moving! In reading this book, one realizes they are not just reading poetry - but the poet's odyssey and of all those known to him- and each poem had a tale to tell which completely stirs you.

Here's the list of books and some of my favorite poems from them- (I don't know how the reviews must be written, but a thing is the same kind of beautiful just once, so I thought it was imperative of me to put my impressions on this collection out there. In future, I will come back to it, with more layers to his poems unraveled)

1. Book of Twilight - The starting poem itself blew me away, the lover is an adult and child all at once!
2. Twenty Love Poems And A Song of Despair
XX.n  

"I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

n
3. Residence on Earth I AND II, Third Residence
This selection wasn't overall as per my taste but I did like it in parts. The poems are quite lyrical, written on the theme of solitude and remoteness.
"Tyranny" was a favorite from Residence I -
n  

A time complete as an ocean,
a wound confused as a new being
encompass the stubborn root of my soul
biting the center of my security."

n
"Only Death" from Residence II
n  

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
she licks the ground looking for corpses,
death is in the broom,
it is death's tongue looking for dead bodies,
it is death's needle looking for thread.

n
4. Canto General
Ah! This collection was difficult to read, and more serious poetry, with some chilling account of suffering of children, chained and burned. This one line from "The Liberators" struck with me : n  "Your lips sealed by death are the purest entombed silence."n
5. The Captain's Verses
The most beautiful collection where he sees the earth in his lover, calls her a queen, sees her as clay for his potter hands. The poems are a dedication of his blazing love and passion for Matilde Urrutia. Neruda first published this collection in anonymity because he didn't want to hurt Urrutia's predecessor, Delia del Carril, who he admitted (in Memoirs) was his perfect mate for 18 years.
- n  "September 8"n is a favorite because it talks about "The Third Body/Thing" which poets like Donald Hall have talked as an 'essence' being shared between him and his wife, Jane Kenyon and, Robert Bly speaks of it in "A Man And A Woman Sit Near Each Other."
- n  "The Son"n is the most heart warming read on the birth of a son, but it goes beyond the phenomenon of birth itself. Go read!
- n  "Your Laughter"n is a poem loved by all. (...but do not take from me your laughter. Ah!)
6. Elemental Odes
A stunning collection - one will be astonished at the number of common things Neruda was capable of writing odes to.
7. Extravagaria
Favorites from this collection were n  "THE UNHAPPY WOMANn (which really overwhelmed me) and "Autumn Testament."
8. Voyages and Homecomings.
9. One Hundred Love Sonnets -My favorite was XC in Night.
10. Song of Protest - The only poem I grasped well was "So Is My Life"
11. The Stones of Chile-
From 'To the Traveler'
n  

"I know this at great cost,
that all life is not outward,
nor all death within"

n
12. Ceremonial Songs. - The selection has poems on the theme of torture, bloodshed and death. Women are the subject of those poems.
13. Fully Empowered - Most delightful read n  "To Wash A Child"n
14. Isla Negra - About the many things that makes the Island beautiful, including his house. I loved Terusa I and II.
15. Art of Birds - (Mockingbirds, Albatross, Pelicans, Pigeons) - Neruda has learnt from all.
16. A House in the Sand - About his house on the Isla Negra, marked by his lover Urrutia's presence in the poem 'Love for this Book.'
17. La Barcarola - The Watersong Ends is a telling of his story to Matilde, about his travels through the jungles, in solitude, and awakening to a divinity and connectedness among all men. It is also reflective of a hope for utopianism.

n  "we go on loving love
and in our blunt way
we bury the liars and live among the truth-tellers.n

18. The Hands of Day - Guilty
19. World's End - The Seeker
20. Seaquake
21. Still Another Day - on the theme of solitude.
22. The Flaming Sword - XVIII 'Someone' about the first encounter of man and woman.

n  He was so afraid, he found a woman.
She was like a hedgehog,
like a chestnut.
She was an edible being,
but man needed her.
The two were unique,
reborn from the earth
and fated for love or destruction.n

23. Stones From The Sky : Neruda writes about silence is intensified into a stone. He not only makes your thoughts revel about exquisite stones like the Ethiopian basalt, the emerald of Colombia or the quartz, but even the mundane dusty stones of the road. (Ah, I'm in awe of how he looked at the world, like nothing should be left out).
24. Barren Terrain
25. The Separate Rose
From Men II : "We all arrive by different streets,
by unequal languages, at Silence."
26. A Call For The Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution : The Judgment was a short yet a soul stirring poem.
27. The Sea and the Bells
28. 2000 : Celebration of mankind's struggle to survive.
29. Elegy
30. The Yellow Heart
31. Winter Garden : A Dog Has Died
32. The Book of Questions
33. Selected Failings : Sad Song To Bore Everyone

The last section is called "Homage: Fourteen Other Ways of Looking at Pablo Neruda" where several translators have picked their favorite poems of Neruda.

(25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33) were published posthumously.

“Out in the crowd, under the wide sky,
we remember our separate selves,
the intimate self, the naked self,
the only one who knows how the nails grow,
who knows how his silence is made
and his own poor words.”
- “It is not necessary” by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid, Memorial de Isla Negra

Over the course of Neruda’s life, he bares his public and private selves to us through his writing. How to summarize a man’s work across his lifetime? To use the quote given from his Nobel Prize speech, “All roads lead to the same point: to the communication of who we are.” Neruda serves as an observer of life, history, presence, and as a voice for his country and humanity overall.

He writes of sex, sadness, the sea, blood, and tears. Waves, shadows, and the insatiable appetite of death. Weeping. Sometimes his poetry reads like automatic writing, stream of consciousness, or the rapid images of the mind’s eye. At times he’s cryptic, while at other times he’s blunt and critical. He writes of the grotesque ravages of war and his absolute disgust for dictators. He sings songs for Spain, for heroes, for remembrance. These are a man’s thoughts, his brain and his reflections. We get Pablo isolated and exiled or Pablo accepted and in love. Angry, patriotic, patriotically angry and angrily patriotic. Idealistic and proud.

This collection took me on an insightful, illuminating, and emotional journey. Overall, I enjoyed it immensely and appreciated the originals being included for several of the translated poems. I also enjoyed reading the provided notes on his life and his works. I got the impression that this was assembled by someone who appreciated the importance of Neruda’s work and influence. I’m glad I picked this up and would recommend it to anyone looking for a robust collection of Neruda’s work across his remarkable career.

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.”

Reading Pablo Neruda is like stepping into a dream you never want to wake from. His words linger, like soft fingertips tracing your skin, leaving shivers that are equal parts desire and awe. I imagine him not as a poet, but as a magician, conjuring entire worlds with a mere flick of his pen, transporting me to distant shores, to candlelit nights and star-drenched skies.

He writes of love not as something we experience, but as something that consumes us, engulfs us in flames, and leaves us gasping for air. His words are both intoxicating and devastating, alive with longing so raw it feels like he has reached into the depths of your soul and found the thing you’ve never dared to name.

Neruda captures not just the feeling of love, but the sensation of it—the taste of it on your lips, the smell of it on the wind, the way it turns the ordinary into something holy. When he writes of landscapes, they bloom before your eyes; his Chilean roots become your own, his oceans and fields your companions. It is romanticism distilled into its purest form, and it has left a permanent mark on me.

He sits on a golden pedestal beside Khalil Gibran, who, like Neruda, possesses that rare alchemy of melding words into something eternal. The two of them could write the language of the stars, and still, it would not compare to the beauty of their poetry.

Neruda doesn’t just write poetry—he invites you into his world and makes you stay. And if I could, I would live there forever.

5 stars, because to give less would feel like an insult to the fire he has lit in my soul.