User:Atcovi/ENG225/Pablo Neruda & Selected Poems

Pablo Neruda | 1904-1973
Neftali Ricardo Reyes y Basoalto - Latin America's most important 20th century poet (1900s). Supported the communist left. Wrote on a variety of things and subject. Became a public poet cuz of the Spanish Civil War.


 * Born in Parral, Chile, July 12, 1904.
 * Dad was hating on his game, so he sought inspiration from Gabriela Mistral. Published poetry at 13, took a Czech writer + St. Paul the Apostle's name: Jan Neruda --> Jan Pablo.
 * 1921-1927, working in povery. THEN...
 * Nation's consul to Burma, Sri Lanka, Java, Singapore, and a few other cities.
 * In Spain: motivated by his poet friends, took a more activisit stance.
 * 1936: Civil War between the Republic and General Fransico Franco. Became a public poet after a friend was shot.
 * 1946: Became senate, representative of Communism.
 * Kicked out of the country after voicing his opposition. Came back in 1952, ran for president but gave it to socialist Salvardor Allende. Became ambassador. 1971, recieved the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda died after his friend was killed.
 * [pg. 2] goes into his poems in detail.

Tonight I Can Write
1924 - makes use of "couplets, repetition, and chiasmus (rhetorical inversion)", looks into the speaker's evolving knowledge of a love affair.


 * He lost his love, contemplates whether he actually loves her or not, and then calls it quits and ends his suffering by ending the poem.

Walking Around
"...demonstrates Neruda's turn toward public subject matter--here expressed not in the political terms of his later work but as a description of urban life and the sufferings of the poor".


 * The speaker is tired of living and seeing establishments (advanced technology) - he hates the reminders of his poor lifestyle and would rather meet with death "shouting in the streets with a knife until I die of a cold" [pg. 4].

I'm Explaining a Few Things (1936)
"Nervuda engages explicitly with politics, and his repeated exhortation, "Come and see the blood in the streets!" illustrates the speaker's intention to address his audience directly and to dedicate his voice to public issues rather than private feelings"


 * Where are the luxuries of nature [lilacs and birds]? He recalls his friends and remind them of the beauty of life and the business of the businessman. But one day, all this is taken away by the cold, murderous behavior of a group of "treacherous generals".

General Song (Canto General) - From Canto II. The Heights of Macchu Picchu VI [pg. 7]

 * He reached Macchu, talks about the area around him.

VII [pg. 8]

 * He laments over the lost of Macchu Picchu

VIII [pg. 9]

 * Calls out to figures of nature in Latin America.
 * Wants the "dead kingdom" to become alive.

IX, X [pg. 11]

 * IX: Short descriptions, not sure what he's referring to.
 * X: Talks about the slave that constructed Macchu. Hidden secrets of gross injustice against humans [slavery].
 * XI & XII: https://www.lookingtoleeward.se/2022/10/23/poem-of-the-week-34-the-heights-of-machu-picchu-xi-and-xii-at-the-end/

"The poet has spent the night atop Machu Picchu (“through a night made stone…”) and is ready to plunge his hand into the earth to reach and resuscitate the civilisation that is buired there, that is to say, the aboriginal roots of America itself. It is a world that is dead and forgotten (“let me plunge my hand/and move to beat in me/a bird held for a thousand years,/ the old and unremembered human heart!”). Even if the poet presages the great joy that he will experience in doing this, he does not intend it to be a sollipsistic, egoistic act: the poet knows that this is an act of personal sacrifice. Because of this, he writes, with such beauty, the following verses: Today let me forget this happiness,

wider than all the sea,

because man is wider than all the sea

and her necklace of islands

and we must fall into him as down a well

to clamber back

with branches of secret water, recondite truths. Neruda lets us know that he wishes to reach down to something immaterial–he wishes to arrive at the soul of man–to what touches all humanity: I do not see the rush of the bird

nor the blind sickle of his talons–

I see the ancient being, the slave, the sleeping one,

blanket his field–a body, a thousand bodies, a man,

a thousand women swept by the sable whirlwind, The universal quality of this “soul” as well as the connection between the two civilisations is represented by the names of the final verses: “Juan” (the English “John”) is perhaps the most typically general of European names, yet this Juan is juxtaposed at the same time as the “son of Wiracocha”, “son of the green star” and “grandson to the turquoise”.

At the end of the poem, the poet has not realised this connection yet. The poem ends only with an imperative, “arise to birth with me, my brother”. The reconciliation between these two worlds–the objective of the poet–occurs in the succeding canto. I am attaching it below because it follows on so naturally from the preceding one. I will not be analysing it, however, above all because it doesn’t really add any new elements to the sequence itself and ought to be enjoyed on its own. The climax of the sequence is the eleventh, the full terminus is the twelfth."

Ode to the Tomato
"shows Neruda shifting his poetic style once again, employing an unadorned expression to focus on every-day subject matter". Examines normal topics. Felt that as a public poet, he wanted to expand his poems to the general public. He believes that he must go back to what is "simply human".


 * Tomatoes are all throughout the street, in the winter: they make their way onto our plates. Talks about salad (pimento, parsley, potatoes that are boiled, strong roast). The tomato, without bones, husk, scale or thorn grants the Chileans a festival of color and freshness.