Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems (Edición bilingüe)
The most comprehensive bilingual collection of Neruda, "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language" (Gabriel García Márquez).
In his long life as a poet, Pablo Neruda succeeded in becoming what many poets have aspired to but never achieved: a public voice, a voice not just for the people of his country but for his entire continent. Widely translated, he probably reached more readers than any poet in history; justly so, for, as he often said, his "poet's obligation" was to become a voice for all those who had no voice, an aspiration that stemmed from his long-time commitment to the communist faith. Born in 1904 in the rainy south of Chile, he enjoyed from an early age the luck of attention. One of his first books, Twenty Love Poems, became a bible for lovers in the Spanish language, and confirmed him in his poet's vocation. At the same time he pursued a lifelong career as a diplomat, serving in a series of consular posts in the Far East and Europe. In 1971, while serving as Chilean ambassador to France, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In a famous essay, "On Impure Poetry," Neruda calls for "a poetry as impure as old clothes, as a body with its foodstains and its shame, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, wakefulness, prophesies, declarations of love and hate, stupidities, shocks, idylls, political beliefs, negations, doubts, affirmations, and taxes."
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. --Pablo Neruda
This collection of Neruda's works spans all of his career and all of human emotion. A decidedly underrated poet in the spectrum of literature, Neruda repeatedly evokes and communicates emotion through his musings on himself and the world around him. Pablo Neruda confronts his emotions head on, remaining critical of himself and the way he chooses to love and live. The poet is at his best when pouring his heart out, when describing just how his woman makes him feel, when describing just what makes her so beautiful to him. Any fan of poetry who is unfamiliar with Pablo Neruda owes it to themselves to purchase this collection or one similar to is and marvel at this master poet's best work. --Reviewer: hueykarl from Waynesboro, Virginia United States
