Ceremonial Songs (Discoveries) - Softcover

Neruda, Pablo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0935480803 ISBN 13: 9780935480801

Publisher: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1996

Synopsis

Presented in English beside the original Spanish-language poems, this edition makes several Pablo Neruda poems available in English—shining jewels that celebrate Neruda's ability to explore landscapes of the heart and mind through the canto or sacred song. The universal message of the poems remains timeless.

About this title

About the Author

Pablo Neruda was an internationally celebrated Chilean poet and a Nobel Laureate. He is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century, as well as a controversial political figure. Maria Jacketti is a poet and instructor whose work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has translated several collections by Pablo Neruda. She lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Nobel laureate Neruda once said he felt as if poems just sprouted from him. Gradually, his entire poetic corpus has been sprouting up in English versions. This first-ever English appearance of these ten songs begins with the longish elegy "The Unburied Woman of Paita," in memory of Manuela Saenz, the lover of Simon Bolivar. One of the ceremonies Neruda describes is the bullfight, in which the "mountainous, opulent" bull wonders if "the new silence covering him is a genital blanket/ of ecstasy, or eternal shadow." Another poem celebrates the Uruguayan-born French writer Leautreamont, who invented "wolves to defend the light" and traveled "beyond evil?to arrive at goodness." Though this volume lacks introduction and footnotes, Neruda's stature is such that any appearance of his poetry in translation deserves to be available to all who love Latin American poetry.?Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

There are many extant English translations of Chilean Nobel Laureate Neruda's poetry, but none contain these resplendent sacred songs. Written more than three decades ago late in Neruda's aesthetically and politically active life, these long, operatic, and exalted poems celebrate the great mysteries of life. Neruda wrote often and passionately of the sea, mountains, sun, moon, and stars, always from unexpected perspectives. Indeed, Neruda has a surrealistic vein running, not from the brain, but directly from the heart. These poems are bold, romantic, and circular, embracing all the colors of the spiritual rainbow. Neruda leaves a reader swooning with the sublime "The Great Summer" and offers pure majesty in "Cordilleras," but he gives full voice to his convictions in "The Unburied Woman of Paita," an elegy to Manuela Saenz, Simon Bolivar's lover. He writes, "We do not go, return, or know. / With eyes closed, we simply exist." Yes, but Neruda sees the universe when he closes his eyes, and his poems make existence that much sweeter. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Latin American Literary Review Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0935480803
• ISBN 13: 9780935480801
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144