I Explain a Few Things
Selected Poems
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Laughter is the language of the soul," Pablo Neruda said. Among the most lasting voices of the most tumultuous (in his own words, "the saddest") century, a witness and a chronicler of its most decisive events, he is the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, the emblem of the engaged poet, an artist whose heart, always with the people, is literally consumed by passion. His work, oscillating from epic meditations on politics and history to intimate reflections on animals, food, and everyday objects, is filled with humor and affection.
This bilingual selection of more than fifty of Neruda's best poems, edited and with an introduction by the distinguished Latin American scholar Ilan Stavans and brilliantly translated by an array of well-known poets, also includes some poems previously unavailable in English. I Explain a Few Things distills the poet's brilliance to its most essential and illuminates Neruda's commitment to using the pen as a calibrator for his age.
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Perhaps the most popular modern poet in the world, the Chilean-born Neruda (1904 1973) won the Nobel Prize for an enormous body of verse that includes introspective lyrics of love and lust; sinuously enthusiastic "elemental odes" to artichokes, watermelon, salt, Walt Whitman and the human eye; declamations in favor of the labor movement, the Communist Party and the working people of any nation; and involuted late poems of self-doubt. Perhaps no serious writer of verse since Whitman has combined so much scholarly attention with so much enthusiasm in a broad international public: unlike some Latin American peers to whom he paid homage, Neruda even at his most ambitious remained clear in his passions. Memoirist, critic and translator Stavans has culled this useful portable volume, with its facing-page English and Spanish from his far larger (1,040 pages) Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), while adding a few translations not included there: translators include Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin and Stavans himself. A particular attraction is Scottish poet Alastair Reid's version of "Autumn Testament," Neruda's mid-career retrospect: "I've been a great flowing river," the poet asserts, "with hard ringing stones, with clear night-noises,/ with dark day-songs."
