Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
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The Nobel Prize—winning poet's most popular work When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.Publishers WeeklyThis collection of poems, first published by Neruda at the age of 19 in 1924, caused something of a scandal because of its frank and intense sexuality: ``I have gone marking the atlas of your body / with crosses of fire. / My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide. / In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.'' It later became one of Neruda's best-loved works, selling two million copies by the 1960s. Why? With image after arresting image, Neruda charts the oceanic movements of passion, repeatedly summoning imagery of the sea and weather: ``On all sides I see your waist of fog, / and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours; / my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests / in you with your arms of transparent stone.'' As irresistible as the sea, love is engulfing (``You swallowed everything, like distance. / . . . In you everything sank!'', but also departs as mysteriously as it arrived, leaving the poet's heart a ``pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.'' These unabashedly romantic poems, wonderfully translated by Merwin, are illustrated in this edition by the paintings of Jan Thompson Dicks with aptly Fauvist tones and iconic formality. (Dec.)
IntroductionviiI.Body of a Woman3II.The Light Wraps You5III.Ah Vastness of Pines9IV.The Morning Is Full11V.So that You Will Hear Me15VI.I Remember You As You Were21VII.Leaning into the Afternoons23VIII.White Bee27IX.Drunk with Pines33X.We Have Lost Even35XI.Almost out of the Sky39XII.Your Breast Is Enough43XIII.I Have Gone Marking47XIV.Every Day You Play53XV.I Like for You to Be Still57XVI.In My at Twilight61XVII.Thinking, Tangling Shadows65XVIII.Here I Love You71XIX.Girl Lithe and Tawny75XX.Tonight I Can Write77The Song of Despair83Selected Bibliography91Suggestions for Further Reading93
