Pablo Neruda (1904–1973)

One of my favorite collections of poetry is Pablo Neruda’s 20 LOVE POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR. Simple and precise, manages an amazing intimacy with seemingly little effort. Maybe I love it partly because of it’s singlemindedness, focused intensity on what it was trying to say. Each poem exhibiting a clarity of revelation. And I was young when I read it, when the discovery of poetry is almost as moving as the poetry itself. Because of this, perhaps my expectations for THE CAPTAIN’S VERSES were unfair. I can’t know, but here we are. THE CAPTAIN’S VERSES contains a handful of superlative poems {including YOUR LAUGHTER, IF YOU FORGET ME, LETTER ON THE ROAD} but also a sprinkle I just couldn’t latch on to, even after multiple starts, I simply resolved to look for a few lines of beauty. Not every voice can be heard, and that might be on me. I appreciate that Neruda is going for a broader spectrum—our love is not to be considered as an isolated thing but as part of the world we live in. Start with 20 LOVE POEMS and then drop by here.… (more)

I'm not a huge fan of poetry but I enjoyed the design a lot (except the font choice) and the poems were interesting too. There are references to despair or at least sadness in each of these poems, despite the title. Each poem is printed in English on the right and the original Spanish on the left. I know enough Spanish to enjoy reading the originals, but with this kind of poetic language I would have been lost without the English side-by-side with the Spanish. I took my time reading it, using each poem and it's translation as a reset of my brain between chapters of a dense text I was reading. The language is flowing, if often mysterious. He seems to mentally live in the twilght of day, of life, Regarding the very pretty layout, the Spanish was printed in a font where some lower-case letters were hard to tell apart and that was not helpful given my incomplete knowledge of the language. For instance, the lower-case b and h were extremely close in appearance. In any case, as a non-poetry fan who is just open to reading anything, I recommend this collection for all readers.… (more)