| Title | : | Love Poems |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0811217299 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780811217293 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 90 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1952 |
And when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.
© 1973 by Neruda && Walsh
Love Poems Reviews
-
Absolutely gorgeous
-
The poems in this collection by Nobel winning Neruda are full, muscular with heart, bursting red in passionate blood, round and loud and straightforward in their declarations. I am sure to re-read them in the future.
from Absence
My love,
we have found each other
thirsty and we have
drunk up all the water and the blood,
we found each other
hungry
and we bit each other
as fire bites,
leaving wounds in us.
But wait for me,
keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
a rose. -
In you I know again how I am born.
In Nerudian universe love is a force of nature and the beloved an embodiment of the Earth, a telluric metaphor par excellence - and deliciously erotic.
Your shoulders rise like two hills
your breasts wander over my breast,
my arm scarcely managed to encircle the thin
new-moon line of your waist:
in love you have loosened yourself like sea water:
I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyes
and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.
---
And when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.
In Eastern poetics love is a feminine sentiment, a silent tempest that rises from the depths of the heart and expressed in a female voice to best capture the desire, longing, pain, and eternal wait – poetry’s tools of trade. Neruda’s love is not only loud and celebratory but intense and masculine - and unabashedly so.
I have scarcely left you
when you go in me, crystalline,
or trembling,
or uneasy, wounded by me
or overwhelmed with love, as when your eyes
close upon the gift of life
that without cease I give you.
He has an exceptional talent for creating striking imagery and stunning phrases out of everyday objects and ordinary natural phenomena. He can transform the mundane into sublime with a few strokes of the pen in such a way that I have never seen any other do. There aren’t many examples of Neruda's high imagery in this short selection, for which one needs to read
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, but there are a few nevertheless:
Your wide fruit mouth
your red tresses
my little tower
---
Winter is not yet gone,
and the apple tree appears
suddenly changed
into a cascade of fragrant stars.
---
And silently,
to our house
in the night and the shadow,
with your steps will enter
perfume’s silent step
and with starry feet
the clear body of spring.
October '19 -
Including about two dozen of Pablo Neruda's best love poems, this pocket-sized collection combines aesthetic appeal and excellent verse. Between the pastel pink covers of Love Poems, Neruda's pacing is swift, his tone intimate, his phrasing rhythmic; images of touch, transformation, and the natural world characterize the poet's sensual poems. In contrast to writers who represent passion as destructive or anti-social, Neruda envisions erotic experience as capable of not only enriching the inner lives of both lovers but also helping the couple harmonize with nature and society. So carefully curated is this collection that not a single poem reads as less than stellar.
-
“IF YOU FORGET ME
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day, each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine. -
Hard to believe Neruda's love poems caused such a scandal when first published anonymously in 1952.
Yes there is eroticism, but it's done in the best possible taste - romantic, gorgeous, a celebration, not tacky or dirty. At the end of the day, Love is the greatest, grandest, most brilliant thing on earth, and this collection absolutely shows that. It is difficult to find an analogue for the sustained passion and gentleness communicated in this absolutely stunning apotheosis of the poetry of sexual love.
Along with 'Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair', this, I believe is Neruda at his peak, in terms of writing from deep within the heart on the one true thing that nobody can take away from us.
Simply a little book to treasure. Stunningly beautiful on every page.
-
Always
I am not jealous
of what came before me.
Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!
Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!
Neruda took my hand and opened the magical world of Poetry to me. Love brought me to him , he had words for what could not be expressed. I borrowed from him to write my love letters. And everything changes when you love poetry. There is hope of finding beauty where none, I had noticed before.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust
Neruda helped me in finding new eyes. And new poets. Some dead ,some dying...
All making death irrelevant. -
I don’t read poetry very much at all but felt inspired to read this small collection as Pablo Neruda plays an important role in Isabel Allende’s latest book The Long Petal of the Sea. The title is how Neruda describes Chile. Most of these poems are written on Capri and concern the sea, the landscape and his love for Mathilde Urrutia. This is a beautiful and lyrical collection which is a pleasure to read. I especially like Your Laughter, Wind on the Island, Ode and Burgeonings and Epithalamium but they are all very romantic and passionate.
-
enjoyed reading this one
-
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
What good is a poet in this mercantile, selfish modern world? Recently, I watched a wonderful movie about the late years of Pablo Neruda, living in exile on a small, sunny island near Italy. [“Il Postino”] It made me realize I have heard this name for years, came across scattered verses of his, but I still haven’t tried to sit down a really dig into one of his collections. If you need an argument that love is more than an excuse for selling Valentine Day’s merchandise, an invention of insolvent authors in need of quick cash, this collection of the love poems written by the celebrated Chilean author is the place to go.
Perhaps very late
our dreams joined
at the top or at the bottom,
up above like branches moved by a common wind,
down bellow like red roots that touch.
As luck would have, I came across a bilingual edition: my rudimentary Spanish is still good enough to make me appreciate the original rhythm, the musicality of the phrasing, to compare the sonorous Latino expressions so familiar from countless pop tunes with the chosen translation. I think the editors did a decent job, given how difficult it is to transfer poetry into a different language. The free verse format of most of these poems give a certain liberty to the translator, but I still wish I had taken Spanish instead of German lessons in school, so I could read these stanzas aloud or put them to music, as they should be.
You know how this is:
If I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
There are certainly recurrent images from one poem to the next, a sense of intimacy, passion, laughter that as a whole forms the key to open to the doors of life, an island world created anew for a population of two, an escape from the madness of ordinary life, a place where the universe itself is just within the reach of your fingers, where the flesh is reconciled with the spirit, where everything (the crashing waves of the sea, the moon and the stars, the passing of the seasons, a campfire on an empty beach) is interchangeable with the landscape of the body, with the music of blood rushing from the heart to the tips of the fingers and time becomes fluid and circular as a second, an hour, a day become interchangeable with eternity.
... a leaf
that dropped upon my breast,
a leaf from the tree
of life
that made a nest and sang,
that put out roots,
that gave flowers and fruits.
And so I come back to “Il Postino” and the power of poetry to inspire and to guide us through life, help us find our roots and help us find the words to express the deepest emotions. I find in Neruda an extraordinary clarity of expression, an apparent economy of stylistic fireworks, a candid honesty that speaks directly to the soul, across geographical or cultural borders, a message of hope in our ability to reach out and communicate with each other in a world that pushes us relentlessly to become cynical and callous.
Night sugar, spirit of crowns
redeemed human blood, your kisses
banish me,
and a surge of water with remnants of the sea
strikes the silences that wait for you
surrounding the worn-out chairs,
wearing doors away.
>>><<<>>><<<
And interesting follow-up to this collection would be a comparison with the more militant, political poems of the author. I would also like to trace his influence on a generation of new poets that came after him, in particular one from my hometown named Nichita Stanescu, who right now strikes me as heavily indebted in some of his works to the style and imagery of Neruda. -
Absence:
My love,
we have found each other
thirsty and we have
drunk up all the water and the blood,
we found each other
hungry
and we bit each other
as fire bites,
leaving wounds in us.
hold me close, recite this in Spanish and watch me melt...
divine. -
One of my favorites of Many.....
"If You Forget Me"
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
By Pablo Neruda -
And one by one the nights
between our separated cities
are joined to the night that unites us.
The light of each day,
its flame or its repose,
they deliver to us, taking them from time,
and so our treasure
is disinterred in shadow or light,
and so our kisses kiss life:
all love is enclosed in our love:
all thirst ends in our embrace.
Here we are at last face to face,
we have met,
we have lost nothing -
Such beautiful poems!
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YOUR LAUGHTER
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lanceflower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die. -
Only lovers can accept the pink cover
And gold, curvy lettering
And accept them as non-hyperbolic,
As a necessity,
As the color and script of the island
Where the wind gallops like a horse
And where not even night can separate them.
Singletons will like the slender shape,
The back pocket worthiness
Of the hand sized rectangles
Of downed trees.
They will compliment the translation,
Or else,
They will scoff at the color of sunset
And discard this volume for one that is more
Economical with its words-
Perhaps Emily Dickenson.
But lovers...
Lovers will tear out a favored page and
Smudge it with many transports
From pocket to folder to another pair of hands and
Celebrate it's return with a freshly fondled read,
Feeling the paper with eyes and fingertips.
Singletons will quote.
Lovers have no need.
(Ta-da! I shall now take a bow. Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much) -
A small solid collection of poems. Night on the island being my favorite of them all. Weird aside I’m almost positive that Pablo spent a lot of time on Capri coming to terms with a foot fetish and it shows. But no kink shaming here, to each his own. Just sometimes very obvious.
-
Wowsome!!!!
It's hard not to fall in love with myself or with the idea of love or just to relive memories while reading this one👍
I would so love to read out loud the lines written here....
I would so like to recommend this book of love poems.
My first ever reread of a poetry book 😘
I would so recommend this book as a gift choice for the upcoming Valentines.
Damn, am I going crazy and mushy all over again?! -
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
Favourite poems: 'Your Feet,' 'Wind on the Island,' and 'Always' -
❤❤❤
-
A beautifull collection of poems by one of my favorite poets.
Neruda's words are entrancing and I have loved every second spent wrapped up in his lyrical voice.
This is probably one of my favorite poems in the collection:
Farewell
Desde el fondo de ti, y arrodillado,
un niño triste, como yo, nos mira.
Por esa vida que arderá en sus venas
tendrían que amarrarse nuestras vidas.
Por esas manos, hijas de tus manos,
tendrían que matar las manos mías.
Por sus ojos abiertos en la tierra
veré en los tuyos lágrimas un día.
2
Yo no lo quiero, Amada.
Para que nada nos amarre
que no nos una nada.
Ni la palabra que aromó tu boca,
ni lo que no dijeron las palabras.
Ni la fiesta de amor que no tuvimos,
ni tus sollozos junto a la ventana.
3
(Amo el amor de los marineros
que besan y se van.
Dejan una promesa.
No vuelven nunca más.
En cada puerto una mujer espera:
los marineros besan y se van.
Una noche se acuestan con la muerte
en el lecho del mar).
4
Amor el amor que se reparte
en besos, lecho y pan.
Amor que puede ser eterno
y puede ser fugaz.
Amor que quiere libertarse
para volver a amar.
Amor divinizado que se acerca
Amor divinizado que se va.
5
Ya no se encantarán mis ojos en tus ojos,
ya no se endulzará junto a ti mi dolor.
Pero hacia donde vaya llevaré tu mirada
y hacia donde camines llevarás mi dolor.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Qué más? Juntos hicimos
un recodo en la ruta donde el amor pasó.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Tú serás del que te ame,
del que corte en tu huerto lo que he sembrado yo.
Yo me voy. Estoy triste: pero siempre estoy triste.
Vengo desde tus brazos. No sé hacia dónde voy.
...Desde tu corazón me dice adiós un niño.
Y yo le digo adiós. -
I have been told that if I want to appreciate poetry than I should read Pablo Neruda. Perhaps it was the translation, but I was just not enthralled by this collection. There were a few good gems that I found, but I was overall just not impressed. Maybe I am just missing something? Or maybe poetry is just not my thing. If you like poetry and have never read Neruda, I would definitely still give this collection a go, maybe you will get more out of it than I did.
-
Tropecei num poema (ou parte dele) um dia destes e tive imensa vontade de ler a obra poética ao qual pertencia: esta. É uma edição bilingue de espanhol e inglês.
Nunca fui leitora de poesia, é algo que acho bonito e do mais difícil de produzir na arte. Em poucas linhas é possível dizer tanta coisa...
Na escola, não houve incentivo à poesia, quando líamos um poema de Pessoa ele dizia-nos determinada coisa mas a professora dizia que não, não era esse o sentido. Sempre achei que a poesia tem um sentido diferente para cada pessoa, a poesia e não só, consoante aquilo que somos e aquilo que já vivemos. Quando sabemos o que é o amor, os poemas de amor são mais sentidos, mais verdadeiros, mais profundos... quando não sabemos podemos achar belo mas não dar o valor que damos quando já sabemos o que é.
Ainda ando à procura a medo de um poeta que me faça apaixonar pela poesia. Admiro quem lê poesia e adora porque eu não consigo e quando consigo é de um poema em muitos de um autor. Com Neruda não foi exceção. Gostei de um ou dois mas não adorei. É bonita a sua poesia, cheia de referências à natureza e ao corpo humano. Muita presença dos símbolos fogo e da rosa, os eternos símbolos do amor.
Ainda não foi desta. -
Το καλύτερο και με διαφορά δείγμα ερωτικής ποίησης του Πάμπλο Νερούδα (με εξαίρεση το Una canción desesperada). Προσωπικά μπόρεσα να κατανοήσω το μεγαλείο της ερωτικής ποίησης του Νερούδα μονάχα όταν μεγάλωσα και παρόλο ότι είμαι μεγάλη θαυμάστρια της πολιτικο-κοινωνικής και ιστορικής τους ποίησης, όσο και του ποιητικού του έργου για τη φύση, την εξέλιξη της ζωής, την ποίηση κλπ, μπορώ να πω με σιγουριά πια ότι λατρεύω και την ερωτική του πλευρά εξίσου με τις υπόλοιπες... Πραγματικά η συγκεκριμένη συλλογή με εξέπληξε και μπορώ να διαβεβαιώσω ότι αποτυπώνει με τον καλύτερο τρόπο το μεγαλείο ενός μεγάλου δημιουργού και άνθρωπου...
-
One of my all-time favorites.
I love its compact size. I love the pink cover with the gold lettering and beautiful font. I love that the English translation sits side-by-side with the Spanish translation. It's a mood lifter and most definitely swoon-worthy. -
The passion, the lust , the love , the poetry comes together like the starts in the night sky to form into a one beautiful masterpiece that still keep its fire burning since that day it was written. Pablo Neruda's Love Poems : a libidinous work of art .
-
A few weeks ago I read a translation of Il postino by Antonio Skármeta where Pablo Neruda is not the main character, but still a central character. At the time I had not read anything by Neruda, and the novel made me want to change that, so when I came across this I had to read it.
It’s, as the title suggest, a collection of some of Neruda’s love poems. Not a large collection, but an interesting one. The poems range from love poems like “The Queen” in which the narrator tell his lover that only he knows that she is really a queen, to much more open eroticism, like the the poem “The Insect” which is a description of the narrator exploring the body of his lover.
Over all, I think this is a nice collection of love poems. -
"But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me." -
მას შემდეგ რაც ვნახე Sex Education-ში ერთ-ერთ პერსონაჟს პაბლო ნერუდას ლექსების კრებულს როგორ ჩუქნიან, გაუჩერებლად ვწუწუნებდი, რომ ბევრად უფრო ვიმსახურებდი ამ კრებულს და ჩემი უძვირფასესი მეგობრის დამსახურებით დღეს ბალახებში გაწოლილი ამ უმშვენიერეს კრებულს ვკითხულობდი და წინადადება ვერ დავასრულე, მადლობა, მირანდა, მპუა
-
Love Poems by Pablo Neruda
IN WHICH Natasha tries to start reading poetry and kinda succeeds?
[3 stars]My love,
we have found each other thirsty and we have
drunk up all the water and the blood.
we found each other
hungry
and we bit each other
as fire bites,
leaving wounds in us.
Love Poems is a collection of Neruda's poetry based around the common theme of, you guessed it, L-O-V-E. The poetry in this collection is quite modest in a profoundly melodramatic way which is quite unusual; me thinking the two adjectives mutually exclusive. The first half are quite special and, I believe, can be enjoyed quite thoroughly without any philosophical or analytical thinking (in other words are light on the brain if you want them to be). As the collection goes on there are a few longer ones that I read thrice over and were completely lost on me; just flew by my head. I am a beginner in reading poetry and, without external assistance, find poems incredibly difficult to analyse (I'm always worried I've got it wrong).
Overall, the poetry collection is short and enjoyable with some beautiful descriptions of love as I have quoted above and, I personally think, is accessible (partly) to beginners in poetry, in saying this, however, there are probably better introductions which I will continue to seek. The latter half were an ambitious undertaking for me but, all in all, I LIKED it as my rating suggests per the Goodreads guidelines.
