The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
by Pablo Neruda
“I love things with a wild passion, extravagantly.”
--Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda declared love with an inebriated tongue of flaming gold. The poet came from the people, and for
them he sang. The poet molded ingots of song from mud, ash, and leaf-- into which he then sprinkled crushed
emerald and lapis lazuli for ornament and for color. The mortar he mixed with sweat, blood, and uric acid.
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)-- the Chilean poet, exile, politician, and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize-- loved with a
reckless abandon, and it spilled over into words—hundreds of thousands of glittering and loamy words. Four
themes dominate his thousands of poems: love- nature- politics- and Neruda himself. But love is the leitmotif that
links all themes as one.
1) Love
Most people will be attracted to Neruda’s love poems and songs of despair. Neruda was a lover of women, three
of whom especially inflame his poetry. Much of the love poetry is tangled, moist, rich and earthy. This sonnet is
one of my favorites: I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowersthanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or prideso I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. Some of his love poems are explicitly sexual, and you will find many
metaphors related to the secret organs of the earth: raucous roots piercing pungent soil- ships (vaginas), and
swords, and sea foam.
Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
You look like the world in your posture of surrender.
My savage peasant body digs through you
And makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
But Neruda’s love poetry is tinged with sadness and despair:
To feel you in my veins like God in the rivers and adore you in the sorrowful bones of dust and lime.
Your breasts smell of honeysuckle while the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies. 2) Nature
Let Neruda be your effusive tour guide into the heart of South American mountains, pampas, jungles, and tundra.
He wrote odes celebrating all of his continent's biodiversity and terrain and some were very long, Whitmanesque
catalogs of flora and fauna. The biophilist in me responded to his many individual odes celebrating the earth and
its land features and forms- its rocks and minerals- flora and fauna. Neruda transports you to the bird nests in the
rainforest or along the Chilean coast. Listen to the shrieks of birds and dodge droppings as you read scores of
odes devoted to different species: albatross- toucan- kestrel- seagull- cormorant- parakeet- gull- woodpeckerlapwing- mockingbird, and dodo bird. Likewise, Neruda loved rocks. He starts with an ode to the atom and
proceeds to describe, in separate poems, the dozens of rocks and minerals unique to South America.
There is something dense, united, seated in the depths,
Repeating its number, its identical sign.
How clear it is that the stones have touched time,
In their fine substance there is a smell of age
And the water that the sea brings from salt and sleep.”(32)
3) Politics
Neruda was a fearless political poet who endured years of exile because he would not shut up. Some readers
expressly dislike his political poems, but he casts his lot with the oppressed and for him, silence was complicity
with the oppressors. I encourage conservative readers to be patient and try to understand why Neruda was
outraged at imperialism and colonialism-- at “the blood thirsty flies” who plundered Latin America's natural
resources, exterminated indigenous culture, and supported kleptocratic capitalist dictators.
Admittedly, I cringe when I see his handful of naive odes celebrating Stalin, Mao, and Castro—each of whom he
later renounced when he learned of their butchery. But on the whole, I think his political poems are another form
of the love poetry-but, instead of erotic love for a woman, he proclaims love for the people and for social justice:
Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck in adversities that were not mine,
Into all the sufferings of others. (680)
Ah great love, small beloved!
I did not stop in the struggle.
I did not stop marching toward life,
Toward peace, toward bread for all.
For my life, give me
All lives,
Give me all the sorrow
Of all the world
Give me all the sorrow
Of all the world
And I will transform it
Into hope. (364) He was a prophet of justice. I love humans like Neruda-- artists who venture outside selfabsorption to take on the burdens of others and who risk disdain by proclaiming affiliations that will immediately
alienate many readers. These poems are political love songs to the people whom he saw as oppressed.
4) Personal
Neruda’s father was a provincial rail worker, and his mother died a few months after his birth. I see him as the
Hispanic Walt Whitman. “I begin by evoking Whitman,” Neruda declares :
Because I love my country
I claim you, essential brother,
old Walt Whitman with your old gray hands. (825)
I touched a hand that day,
and it was Walt Whitman’s hand.
Throughout my entire childhood,
my companion was that hand with dew on it.
And Walt did not disdain
All the gifts of the earth
but raised my eyes
to the treasure we find
Inside a kernel of wheat. (425) Neruda’s poems, like Whitman’s, are often catalogs of the various places he lived,
the people he met, the flora and fauna that intrigued him, and the martyrs and poets who made him weep.
This Collection
Presented here are 600 poems, approximately a quarter of what Neruda wrote and which are ordered
chronologically and organized by collection. The editor sprinkled in some untranslated Spanish poems- and
occasionally gives alternate English translations of the same poem, which may surprise you at the tremendous
difference a translator makes. Sometimes a poem that meant little to me in one translation leapt to life in another.
I loved nearly every single poem in this collection, highlighted something on almost every page, and I place this
book on my altar bookcase so that I may continually re-read Neruda with Whitman, Shakespeare and Montaigne
for the rest of my life.
My Conclusion
This is my first review of poetry. A poet communicates experience in condensed and concentrated language.
Neruda sings of multiplicity and of common things. In the words of the editor, Neruda “works from the bottom
up.”
I kneel with Neruda in the search for epiphany. I stand with him in rebellion against abstract, abstruse, evasive
poetry. Irony and experimentalism have their place in poetry, but I prefer my poets-- passionate, simple,
understandable, and honest. In Neruda’s heart there were furies and sorrows that he unleashes. He speaks for us
that we might better speak for ourselves.
March 3, 2013.|Posted while reading: It's Valentine's Day and I want to share a love poem.
Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorus on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.
The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea toward no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.
The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.
Verdict: Not 5 stars as my favorite poetry goes, but good, very good, with some breathtaking verses I'll be
rereading.
|Pending a review
Ute Lemper
One of my favourite singers has just released an album of songs she created from 12 of Pablo Neruda poems. It's
called "Forever":
http://www.utelemper.com/neruda/
The Flight from Weimar to Chile
[Ute Lemper, Live at the Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane, Friday, September 13, 2013]
His legacy is
An ocean of
Probabilities,
Made likely
By the flow
Of verse
From its source,
His mind,
To a remote
Destination
Across the world,
Us, the audience
He had in mind,
Focussed and
He had in mind,
Focussed and
Inexorable.
You, Ute,
Hovered
Bird-like in
Some crazy,
Jazz Birdland,
Scatting,
Above the water,
Swooping
And squawking
And growling
And soaring
Like a flight
Of sea-birds
Over timeless
Slow moving
Estuaries.
One by one,
You singled out
The crafted
Sensations
Of his rhyme,
Like gulls plunging on
Chips left behind
In the beach sand.
You mimicked
Miles’ trumpet
With your voice,
Deftly painting
Sketches of Spain
And Chile
In Spanish,
French,
Even Anglaise.
At first, coy,
You held hands
With Neruda,
Until later,
No longer the
Sophisticated tease,
You gave yourself
To this man
Of simple ways,
Then both of you
Took off
Like swallows
On the breeze.
You discovered
His thoughts,
His thoughts,
His words, his love,
His passionate
Intensity
In a tiny book
That's now
Well-fingered.
Then you added your own
Unique voice, your arms
Your legs, your body
And your love,
So that in turn
You might be loved
And you were
And still, my heart,
Again, you are.
My Favourite Modern Lover
[Apologies to Jonathan Richman]
Just a sketch, some paint, a glaze
Were all Picasso needed
To capture pretty women,
Some were even in the nude.
Although he was very short,
Girls could not resist his gaze.
Then came Pablo Neruda.
He wrote lots of poetry.
He learned how to flirt with verse,
Now women who read it swoon.
Though he's my favoured Pablo,
I still can't tell who's ruder.
Gratitude
Thank you, Fate,
For guiding me
To my love.
The entanglement
Of limbs
And flesh
Is a pleasure
Great, but small
Compared with
When our
Hearts and minds
Enmesh.
I'm in Love with a German Film Star
[I Crave Your Lips, Your Eyes, Your Avatar]
[I Crave Your Lips, Your Eyes, Your Avatar]
Next time you're in bed
I'd like to hold you
In my loving arms,
Kiss you on the lips,
Run my hand over
Your curvaceous hips,
Gently part your legs,
Entreat your dew drops
And take a few sips,
Until you wanted
To be entered as
If we had been wed.| "And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.
About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.
I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.
What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.
And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.
But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.
And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved..."
-Pablo Neruda
|LOVE HIM...an excerpt from my favorite poem...
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.
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.