Pablo Neruda
January 23rd 2009 04:38
PABLO NERUDA
One of the things I've been doing this summer is reading Pablo Neruda's poetry.
In a Bilingual edition. If you dont read Spanish fluently (like me) try to get a bilingual parallel text for your first reading!
Now I had heard of him and reading something Isabel Allende wrote about him reminded me that I had never taken the time to explore his work more fully.
Happily the library had a copy of a translation of Residence on Earth and also an anthology that included his later poems up to the 70s.
So why should you read him and why in a bilingual parallel text if you aren't fluent in Spanish.
1) ASSONANCE. In a romance language like Spanish where rhymes are easier internal assonance and meter is particularly important. Neruda makes the technique of assonance music so that this poems become a symphony of sound and image.
2) Neruda is one of the leading Surrealist poets of this century and that movement.
After you read Neruda you can see why "Magical Realism" was almost inevitable as a literary movement and development in Southern and Central America.
He can make a phrase like the green wind el viente verde seem magical rather than nonsensical
3) He is also a Marxist / Socialist but does not let ideology hinder his poetry but rather his political activism fuels his passion when he wrote about Spain and the Civil War of the 30s.
4) Read Oda la buzo "the diver", or Plenos Poderes, "Full Powers" or his Odes or Sonnets.
5) It's a challenging experience. Just as you come across a poem that's almost annoying bizarre in the physicality and sensuality of it's imagery you turn the page and find something light yet sorrowful like "You come Flying" a Lament for a friend who drowned.
Pablo Neruda is a poet you should consider reading!
One of the things I've been doing this summer is reading Pablo Neruda's poetry.
In a Bilingual edition. If you dont read Spanish fluently (like me) try to get a bilingual parallel text for your first reading!
Now I had heard of him and reading something Isabel Allende wrote about him reminded me that I had never taken the time to explore his work more fully.
Happily the library had a copy of a translation of Residence on Earth and also an anthology that included his later poems up to the 70s.
So why should you read him and why in a bilingual parallel text if you aren't fluent in Spanish.
1) ASSONANCE. In a romance language like Spanish where rhymes are easier internal assonance and meter is particularly important. Neruda makes the technique of assonance music so that this poems become a symphony of sound and image.
2) Neruda is one of the leading Surrealist poets of this century and that movement.
After you read Neruda you can see why "Magical Realism" was almost inevitable as a literary movement and development in Southern and Central America.
He can make a phrase like the green wind el viente verde seem magical rather than nonsensical
3) He is also a Marxist / Socialist but does not let ideology hinder his poetry but rather his political activism fuels his passion when he wrote about Spain and the Civil War of the 30s.
4) Read Oda la buzo "the diver", or Plenos Poderes, "Full Powers" or his Odes or Sonnets.
5) It's a challenging experience. Just as you come across a poem that's almost annoying bizarre in the physicality and sensuality of it's imagery you turn the page and find something light yet sorrowful like "You come Flying" a Lament for a friend who drowned.
Pablo Neruda is a poet you should consider reading!
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