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Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

by Pablo Neruda, W.S. Merwin (Translator), Cristina Garcia (Introduction), Pablo Picasso (Illustrator)

4.41 of 5 stars 4.41 · rating details · 14,576 ratings · 511 reviews

When it appeared in 1924, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada launched a young and unknown poet, whose work would ignite a generation, into the international spotlight.

Drawn fromt he most intimate and personal of associations, Pablo Neruda's most beloved collection of poetry juxtaposes the exuberance of youthful passion with the desolation of grief, the sensual...more

Paperback, Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 94 pages

Published 2004 by Penguin Classics (first published January 1st 1924)

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Mar 13, 2008 whichwaydidshego? rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who appreciate being steeped in imagery... & passion.

Shelves: poetry, translations

I took my time reading this, choosing to savor the succulent, vivid, tactile words. I must say, these poems are luscious! I feel their imagery as much as visualize it. Phrases such as "In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles..." A garment of kisses. How delightful! (I want one!)

I also love how he is constantly mixing ideas of fire and water together, as if with love somehow they feed off each other where they should cancel each other out. "Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning."...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Io rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry, maestrale, favorites

Chiudo gli occhi e avvicino il naso alle pagine ruvide e gialline di questo libro. Aspiro con forza, mi impregno i polmoni di quest'odore forte, inconfondibile, che proviene altezze siderali, là dove solo il cuore di un uomo può arrivare.

"Qui ti amo.
Negli oscuri pini si districa il vento.
Brilla la luna sulle acque erranti.
Trascorrono giorni uguali che s'inseguono.

La nebbia si scioglie in figure danzanti.
Un gabbiano d'argento si stacca dal tramonto.
A volte una vela. Alte, alte stelle.

O la croce n...more

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Aug 25, 2008 Ilze rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Has anyone read and understood the Song of Solomon? Neruda must have. And he must have understood it too! These poems are more than just about the physical love between man and woman: they are about what happens to the soul. For some reason pine trees feature a fair amount here, from " ... as I love you, the pines in the wind / want to sing your name with their leaves of wire" to "I have said that you sang in the wind / like the pines and like the masts. / Like them you are tall and taciturn, /...more

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Nov 25, 2007 Jenna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: international-poetry

Like many people, I first encountered the poetry of Pablo Neruda when I was 15 or 16, a romantic teenager on the lookout for love poetry that would speak to me or speak for me. Upon reading "The Captain's Verses" and "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" for the first time as a rash young teenager, I rashly leapt to the conclusion that Neruda's poetry was the one to fit the bill. Looking back from the vantage point of adulthood, I now realize that Neruda's vision of love is starkly different...more Like many people, I first encountered the poetry of Pablo Neruda when I was 15 or 16, a romantic teenager on the lookout for love poetry that would speak to me or speak for me. Upon reading "The Captain's Verses" and "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" for the first time as a rash young teenager, I rashly leapt to the conclusion that Neruda's poetry was the one to fit the bill. Looking back from the vantage point of adulthood, I now realize that Neruda's vision of love is starkly different from my own, and when I reread "Twenty Love Poems" these days, my dominant emotional response is one of bafflement. I feel baffled by the extent to which Neruda objectifies the woman he loves. Over and over, he likens her to a "toy doll" or a "snail," a field of wheat or a plot of earth waiting to be plowed; at times, I get the feeling that he considers her and her body to be one and the same. Casting his beloved as an inscrutable and sometimes terrifying force of nature, Neruda never seems to acknowledge her agency, her point-of-view, or the fact that she even has a mind. Similarly, when I reread Neruda's "Elemental Odes," I feel alienated by what strikes me as an anti-intellectual agenda lurking beneath the beautiful and vivid words: in "Ode to the Book," for example, he states, "My poems have not eaten poems....I'm on my way with dust in my shoes, free of mythology." Like his love poetry, these lines of Neruda's leave me feeling baffled, wondering what I am to make of this seemingly total rejection of centuries of mythological and literary tradition. I love Neruda, I really do, but reading his poetry sometimes leaves me with a sinking feeling that the world is opaque, and its opaqueness is sometimes dazzling, sometimes frightening, but it is never quite satisfying. I am left feeling a little suffocated, too.

Maybe I'll return to Neruda in a few years and feel differently. For now, my favorite Neruda poems are, curiously, the ones that interested me the least when I was first exposed to his works as a teenager: i.e., the bloody political poems, like the absolutely masterful "I'm Explaining a Few Things."(less)

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Feb 14, 2013 Angus rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nobel-laureates, reviewed-and-blogged, 5-stars

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

A Hundred Feelings

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair is the second collection of poetry published by the Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. The poems in this collection strongly depict love in very personal, intimate, erotic, and artistic ways. Published when he was only 19 years old, the critically acclaimed collection gave him international fame and set his place among men of letters as an emerging South American poet.

I didn't know how to read this. Should I re...more

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Mar 14, 2008 Danny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tonight I Can Write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and 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 I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write th...more

18 likes · like · see review

Aug 08, 2007 vie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of l...more

19 likes · like · see review

Sep 18, 2008 Kara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Kara by: A Gift from Matthew Seuschek

Shelves: poetry

Nature and love are probably two of the world’s most mysterious offerings. His poems consistently bring the two together and takes the reader into the innocence of true love, immense passion and complete surrender. He enhances the experience by calling attention to the natural beauty of the world around us, a beauty that can also be found within us.

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Sep 03, 2007 Cassidy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is just my personal bias--I don't really enjoy reading Neruda. I find his references to women just a little bit too objectifying, so it makes my skin crawl. Not that some poems aren't lovely, but overall I don't like him.

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Nov 12, 2010 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, poetry, chilean, book-club-for-two

This is not my favorite book of Neruda poems - many of the poems are a bit too abstract for my tastes, although the language is still incredibly beautiful and sensual. I found myself enjoying the later poems in this book much more than the earlier ones. My favorites are XII ("Your Breast is Enough"), XIV ("Every Day You Play"), XVIII ("Here I Love You"), XIX ("Girl Lithe and Tawny"), and XX ("Tonight I Can Write"). There are some truly wonderful lines in these poems, full of rich imagery.

from "E...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Huda AbuKhoti rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

I didn't like this, specially because I read it after a love poetry book with a similar approach. I don't like the way love is portrayed here, neither do I like the references to his lover; treating her like a usable object. It was too sexual and inappropriate for me, I had to skip reading lots of lines.

Do not recommend.

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Jan 06, 2008 Jon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: lovers and dreamers

Como un vaso albergaste la infinita tenura,
y el infinto olvido te rizo como un a vasa.

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

A breathtaking experience of literature. Image after crushing image. I return to this volume whenever I need to see proof of the divine. The young Neruda rips himself open and offers his aching bleeding heart to the universe. The sketches by the young Picasso complete this gift. Uncork a fine Chilean red, speak th...more

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May 22, 2013 Shar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

So here's the thing. My main language is Spanish, and I had, as a rule, purposefully avoided reading this book in English. I read this in Spanish class way back when, and I was so in love, that when I started reading in English I just thought no translation was going to do Neruda justice. As it is, it is very hard to do Neruda justice in a language that is not Spanish. Spanish is very flowery, and especially when it comes to poetry, a lot of things get lost in translation when you pass it to Eng...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Fabiana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: especiales

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.»

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos má...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Valerie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library-books, male-writer, poetry, around-the-world-challenge, world-literature

I finally got around to reading Neruda. I hear people read him now and then at open mics, and I always like them, but I never read one of his books.

Neruda is known for his love poems, so I thought this book would be a good place to start. These are the romantic poems that people think of when they want the person they love to write them a poem. They are passionate and sensual. The next time someone asks me for a love poem suggestion (this happens sometimes), I am going to send them to Neruda.

Ner...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Walkergeraldine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“The numberless heart of the wind
beating above our loving silence” The Morning is Full, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda. Ever since I started writing poetry, anyone who knew my reading interests and my writing style would tell me to read Neruda. A writer I knew who I greatly admired listed Neruda as his biggest influence. Neruda, Neruda, Neruda. Here’s a little fact about me: the more hype there is about someone, the more I’m told to do something, the less likely it is to get done.

Anyway. When peopl...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

This collection is earthy and really celebrates what is natural--pines, water, desire, stars. I always feel like he wrote these poems at night in a room with a big, open window and a garden and a moon right outside. I think his style is a little distant, like I'm seeing him through a window, too, but I like the feeling that my fingers are almost touching water but not quite.

I'm putting these lines here so I can easily find them wherever I am:

I was alone like a tunnel.

The clouds travel like white...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Sanjay Casula rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
No one can stop this night from withering away,
And I cannot stop my heart, mourning for the lost love.
Grieving profoundly for the irreparable loss.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I will never see love for me in her eyes.

She used to say, she wouldn't live without me'
And today she is ain't ready to just think about me.

It's a cloudy night and cold breeze is blowing against me.
Seems it's going to rain... seems I am going to cry.

Tonight I can write the sad...more

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Jun 24, 2011 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

3 THINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK

1. I went to Pablo Neruda's house once. Well, I went to one of his houses. He had three of them. I was teaching English in Santiago, Chile at the time. I went to Neruda's house in Valparaiso, which is a beach town. Weirdly enough, I visited on my twentieth birthday, on a lark, because I just happened to be vacationing in a nearby cabin with my host family.
The thing that I remember about Pablo Neruda's house is that it's set back in a grove of dark pine trees and that ther...more 3 THINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK

1. I went to Pablo Neruda's house once. Well, I went to one of his houses. He had three of them. I was teaching English in Santiago, Chile at the time. I went to Neruda's house in Valparaiso, which is a beach town. Weirdly enough, I visited on my twentieth birthday, on a lark, because I just happened to be vacationing in a nearby cabin with my host family.
The thing that I remember about Pablo Neruda's house is that it's set back in a grove of dark pine trees and that there's sand everywhere. The sky was dark that day and it was cold, even though it was in the summer.
What I remember most about the experience wasn't the house itself, or the tour, or the nationalistic trinkets that vendors were trying to sell, but rather the feeling that the pine trees around the house evoked. They were like a dark magic that still sits in my mind six years later. Curious. Because this is the thing that stands out to me most about Neruda's poetry: the magnetic feeling of nature. The dirt and the flesh and the elements and the cold, wet, hot, dry. His poetry is so sensual, so primal, so tied to the earth (I know I sound like a hippie, but its true). When I look at my journal entries from this period in my life they're full of this sort of talk. I wrote about stars and cloud formations and the consistency of mud and the shape of a cheekbone. Southern Chile does this to you. The land casts a spell on you. Neruda put this spell into words.
"Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?

2. I read "Twenty Love Poems" about five years ago, but I thought it was corny at the time. The edition I read had all these terrible erotic etchings in it. I hate that. I almost threw up. I don't believe in illustration much, because it insults the reader's imagination. Especially illustration in poetry, a genre which usually uses abstract images.
This time when I read "Twenty Love Poems" I read it slowly. And it reminded me of southern Chile. It reminded me of gloomy mountains, and the beauty of the rivers and clouds and the darkness of the ocean. It reminded me of that period of time, when I turned twenty, right before my life changed in many ways.
This time when I read "Twenty Love Poems" it meant something to me, because now I have been in love. I have been in love and have experienced all of the sorrows and thrills of love. Mostly sorrows. But the hope of future thrills.

3. I found a musty Time/Life book about South America at a thrift store near my house. In the book there is a photograph of Mr. Neruda seated at a wooden desk at his house in Valparaiso. He is wearing a sweater and staring out the window. He has a pen and ink in front of him and he is holding his head as though he's deep in thought or distressed. Or both. I have hung this picture up in my apartment. It makes me want to write. It makes me remember all of the dark clouds. It makes me remember that "love is so short, forgetting is so long."
(less)

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Mar 27, 2011 Ahmed Osama rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

رائع ممكن تكون الترجمة هي اللي خذلتني شوية أو صعوبة بعض المعاني اللي حسيتها غامضة شوية هحاول اقراه بترجمة تانية

أتذكّركِ مثلما كنتِ ﻓﻲ الخريف الفائت.
قبعةٌ رماديةٌ وقلبٌ هادئ.
ﻓﻲ عينيكِ تتّقدُ ألسنة الشفق.
وتسقط الأوراق ﻓﻲ مياه روحِك

أنا اليائسُ، الكلمةُ بلا أصداء،
الذي فقد كل شيء، وكان لديه كل شيء.

كنتُ أتذكّرك وروحي تضيق بهذا الحزن الذي تعرفين. أين كنتِ آنئذٍ؟ بين أيّ أناس؟ أيّة كلمات كنتِ تقولين؟ لماذا يداهمُني كل هذا الحب عندما أشعر بالحزن، وأَشعرُ بكِ بعيدة؟

"فيكِ أملُ كلِّ يوم. تأتين مثل الندى فوق...more رائع ممكن تكون الترجمة هي اللي خذلتني شوية أو صعوبة بعض المعاني اللي حسيتها غامضة شوية هحاول اقراه بترجمة تانية

أتذكّركِ مثلما كنتِ ﻓﻲ الخريف الفائت.
قبعةٌ رماديةٌ وقلبٌ هادئ.
ﻓﻲ عينيكِ تتّقدُ ألسنة الشفق.
وتسقط الأوراق ﻓﻲ مياه روحِك

أنا اليائسُ، الكلمةُ بلا أصداء،
الذي فقد كل شيء، وكان لديه كل شيء.

كنتُ أتذكّرك وروحي تضيق بهذا الحزن الذي تعرفين. أين كنتِ آنئذٍ؟ بين أيّ أناس؟ أيّة كلمات كنتِ تقولين؟ لماذا يداهمُني كل هذا الحب عندما أشعر بالحزن، وأَشعرُ بكِ بعيدة؟

"فيكِ أملُ كلِّ يوم. تأتين مثل الندى فوق تويجاتِ الزهر. تُغرِقين الأفق عند غيابِك. هاربةً دَوْماً كالموجة."

"لا تشبهين أحداً منذ أحببتكِ. دعيني أمدِّدُكِ بين أكاليل أزهارٍ صفر. من الذي يكتب اسمكِ بأحرفٍ من دخانٍ بين نجوم الجنوب؟ آه دعيني أتذكّر كيف كنتِ آنذاك، عندما لم تكوني بعدُ قد وُجدتِ."

"أراني منسيّاً مثل هذه المراسي القديمة. وأكثر حزناً هي الأرصفة عندما يحلّ المساء. تتعب حياتي الجائعة من غير جدوى. أُحِبُّ ما ليس عندي. كم أنتِ بعيدة. سَأَمي يصارع الشفق الذي يأتي بطيئاً. لكنَّ الليل يصل ويبدأ يغنّي لي. والقمر يطوف بإطلالة الحلم. تتأملني النجوم الكبيرة بعينيكِ. ومثلما أحبُّكِ، تودّ أشجار الصنوبر ﻓﻲ الريح، أن تغني اسمك مع أوراقها الرقيقة."

"كم هو قصيرٌ الحب، وكم هو طويلٌ النسيان." (less)

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Feb 23, 2011 Joanna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, books-read-2011

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. This collection, Neruda's second published work, was first published in Chile in 1924. This English translation (by W.S. Merwin no less) came out in 1969, two years before Neruda won the Nobel Prize.

Taken as a whole, these are perhaps the most beautiful love poems ever written. Whereas Shakespeare's sonnets are idealized and courtly and passionate, they--like Sonnets from the Portuguese--come down through the ages as exclusive and exquisite writing from o...more

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Apr 15, 2009 nanto marked it as wishlist-‎a-k-a-buku-buruan · review of another edition

ada puisi ini di buku ini kah?

I'm Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking...more ada puisi ini di buku ini kah?

I'm Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!(less)

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May 18, 2013 Antonomasia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry, non-western-fiction, 2013, twenties-and-thirties

Penguin Classics edition, translated by W.S. Merwin, introduction by Cristina García
I looked at as many translations as I could before buying and was sure I'd found the right one. The bold Warhol cover is a nice bonus.
Yet after all that - and a high price for such a tiny book - I didn't connect with many of these poems as deeply as I thought I would. All have some lovely moments, but the best (and most viscerally sexy) verse is still, I think, the first, 'Body of a Woman'.
This was among those w...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Fernanda De Hoyos- Walther rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books, must-re-read

MY TWO FAVORITES
TONIGHT I CAN WRITE AND THE SONG OF DESPAIR.

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and 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 I loved her too.
How could o...more

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May 17, 2011 Courtney rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Poetry Enthusiasts

Shelves: 2011

I hate poetry. Maybe I am just not the deep, soul-searching, finger-snapping, dark brooding type that can enjoy this kind of word garbage. Who knows. But these 21 poems were laughable. It was like Neruda just Madlibbed in the words "Wave," "Soul," "Birds" and "Twilight" randomly and then at the end pretended he was talking about some profound love. Uh, no? At best you have some interesting descriptions that still don't make much sense and at worst you have hilariously clichéd poetry that sounds...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

Read it in Spanish, which only made the jarring shifts in imagery all the more confusing. Difficult to understand upon first reading (and sometimes second and third provided diminishing returns), but it's not hard to see why young men used to recite these poems to hot babes in South America to pick them up (see The Motorcycle Diaries), and why it apparently worked.

As with other poets, the clearer the poem, the better I liked it. My favorite is "Puedo escribir los versos..." because it is so luci...more Read it in Spanish, which only made the jarring shifts in imagery all the more confusing. Difficult to understand upon first reading (and sometimes second and third provided diminishing returns), but it's not hard to see why young men used to recite these poems to hot babes in South America to pick them up (see The Motorcycle Diaries), and why it apparently worked.

As with other poets, the clearer the poem, the better I liked it. My favorite is "Puedo escribir los versos..." because it is so lucid, and describes so well the conflicting emotions of a breakup (he goes back and forth between loving her and not loving her). In second place would probably be "me gusta cuando te callas," because it's also fairly lucid, and can be followed by my little mind. It's clearly about something (the female orgasm--a cause for self-reflection since I didn't realize that when I read it in college....). Poem 1 is also a straight-out celebration of the Venusian figure, which I can follow and, therefore, appreciate.

I have a hard time appreciating free verse in general because unlike works that are explicitly in a genre, it is hard to compare what is written to what was being attempted. With a sonnet, for example, there are certain conventions against which we can judge the poem. But with free verse, one doesn't really know what one is looking at. Is it an elegy? An ode? What is this thing?

As if my difficulties with form were not enough, the content is equally vexing. Neruda is not a poet of wit, like the metaphysical poets, or a philosophical poet, but he works by a relentless chain of images, many of which are shockingly unrelated to the others in the chain. Rilke works the same way. It's just as difficult to understand the relationship between the images, and to appreciate the content of the poetry, as it is to understand why the poet used the particular structure that he did. I have to conclude, then, that both poets operate on a pre-intellectual level (not an insult), a visceral level, an instinctive, facial level (to be pretentious), and the reader must do so also. I have a hard time doing so.

Nevertheless, I was able to derive some pleasure from this book.(less)

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May 13, 2012 La Mala rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Cuando tenía quince años y vivía enamorada hasta del aire , las palabras que repetía constantemente siempre estaban relacionadas con la tristeza . Cada vez que vivía un amor apasionado no correspondido , me sumergía en depresiones eternas y me regocijaba recitando cosas como "Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido" . Siempre que sentía que iba a morirme de amor y escuchaba mi historia en cada poema , Neruda era el más importante .

Después crecí .Hace poco , en la facultad -hogar de los arroga...more Cuando tenía quince años y vivía enamorada hasta del aire , las palabras que repetía constantemente siempre estaban relacionadas con la tristeza . Cada vez que vivía un amor apasionado no correspondido , me sumergía en depresiones eternas y me regocijaba recitando cosas como "Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido" . Siempre que sentía que iba a morirme de amor y escuchaba mi historia en cada poema , Neruda era el más importante .

Después crecí .Hace poco , en la facultad -hogar de los arrogantes -, un profesor muy INTELECTUAL-de esos que saben tanto que de lo único que no dudan es de sus propias palabras - nos las hizo corta a todas las locas de amor por Neruda :

-El poeta ese no vale nada - dijo con palabras un poco más elegantes - Uno no puede sentirse identificado con palabras de amor que alguien en otro tiempo escribió para una persona en especial . Es como robar . Nadie puede tomar prestada una declaración de amor que nada deja a la imaginación ,no te podés apropiar de eso . No son tuyas . Además - terminó - es poesía mal escrita .

Para mi profesor , hombre de mundo , de letras y de varios idiomas ,la poesía de Neruda y de tantos como él estaba sobrevalorada , era más comercial que otra cosa . En cambio , con mucho entusiasmo , nos recomendaba un poeta olvidado llamada Emeterio Cerro - creo - que jugaba con los sonidos . La poesía de ese decía así:

Mondonará , Mondonará
Fluyido Lamosol .

El truco , decía mi profesor , estaba en darle nuestro significado . Buscar en el juego inentendible , algo que tuviese sentido para nosotros . De eso si nos podíamos apropiar , eso si lo podíamos tomar prestado .

Demás está decir que odié el Mondonará tanto como odiaba las peliculas de Lynch . Estaba fuera de mi comprensin y requería mucha movilización de neuronas .

Sin embargo , Con el tiempo entendí lo que quería decir . Neruda es poesía popular . Cualquiera puede entenderla , cualquiera . Eso era lo que le molestaba a este intelectual de elite . El quería hacernos entrar en un círculo de poca gentey trataba a ese estilo de poetas como "la chusma" . Le daba fastidio , más que nada , que un popular hubiese sido premiado con el premio Nobel y a Borges se lo hubiera dejado de lado .

Nunca me dejó de gustar Pablito , pero si capté lo que quiso decir el profe . No es poesía muy complicada , no es Shakespeare ni Borges pero no deja de ser hermosa , no deja de contar una historia de vida , de amores y revoluciones .Pablito hizo que todos podamos disfrutar de la poesía . Pablito luchó . Pablito es del pueblo , y es de lo mejor . (less)

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Mar 31, 2012 Amber Berry rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 09, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, poetry, spanish, latin-america, chilean

One of Neruda's most popular and famous collections, Twenty Poems and a Song of Despair was published while the poet was still a young man. It's a very slender volume; as the title implies, there are only 21 poems, and none of them are very long. While the work definitely contains Neruda's usual striking imagery and lyrical power throughout, I felt for such a slim volume the individual poems were surprisingly inconsistent. There are several gems in there, but there are also a couple only so-so p...more

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Jul 12, 2011 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd forgotten about Neruda over the years, overshadowed by my memories of Lord Byron and the like but a timely quote posted by Goodreads brought the beauty of his work flooding back.
His poetry is passionate, subtly erotic and embraces the complete surrender one has when they are deeply and madly in love.
One can only hope to feel the love, the precious gift that Neruda portrays in his love poems and if you have ever touched that rare emotion of loving someone so completely that you forget where...more

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About Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be fro...more Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be from Paul Verlaine. With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century.

Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.

During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.(less)

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“I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” — 1,698 people liked it

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that poetry came in search of me.” — 392 people liked it

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