A review by lokster71
Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda by Pablo Neruda, Nathaniel Tarn
4.0
I started this book back in the summer and have been reading it in little chunks on and off since. It has side-by-side versions of each poem in Spanish and English so its thickness as an object is slightly deceptive. It's depth as literature though is unfathomable.
Poetry in translation is always an oddity. Poetry is language distilled. Its rhythms and rhymes are hard to duplicate in translation. "The original is unfaithful to the translation" as Jorge Luis Borges once said. And it also reminds me in particular of my pathetic monoglot Englishness. I wish I could read them in the original Spanish and reach for my own translation, which would probably be worse but it would be mine.
Neruda's poetry is sometimes hard to understand. That's not a bad thing. Sometimes it is simple but always there are lines and images that make one gasp and this selection makes me want to read everything he wrote.
I have long liked the poem, 'Tonight I Can Write.../Puedo Escribir Los Versos...' from 'Veinte Poemas De Amor' (1924) since I came across it elsewhere but there is wonderful poem after wonderful poem in here. Poems about love and loss. Poems about politics and poems about poetry. I really liked the selection from 'Odas Elementales' (1954), particularly 'Ode To a Yellow Bird'. I wish I could hear these poems read out loud, which I think is the way poetry should be heard. I'm going off now to find out if there are any out there on the internet.
I really enjoyed this collection. It repays the work put into it.
Poetry in translation is always an oddity. Poetry is language distilled. Its rhythms and rhymes are hard to duplicate in translation. "The original is unfaithful to the translation" as Jorge Luis Borges once said. And it also reminds me in particular of my pathetic monoglot Englishness. I wish I could read them in the original Spanish and reach for my own translation, which would probably be worse but it would be mine.
Neruda's poetry is sometimes hard to understand. That's not a bad thing. Sometimes it is simple but always there are lines and images that make one gasp and this selection makes me want to read everything he wrote.
I have long liked the poem, 'Tonight I Can Write.../Puedo Escribir Los Versos...' from 'Veinte Poemas De Amor' (1924) since I came across it elsewhere but there is wonderful poem after wonderful poem in here. Poems about love and loss. Poems about politics and poems about poetry. I really liked the selection from 'Odas Elementales' (1954), particularly 'Ode To a Yellow Bird'. I wish I could hear these poems read out loud, which I think is the way poetry should be heard. I'm going off now to find out if there are any out there on the internet.
I really enjoyed this collection. It repays the work put into it.