Review: Love Poems by Pablo Neruda

Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda's love poems are the most celebrated of the Nobel Prize winner's oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images and reveling in a fiery re-imagining of the world. Mostly written on the island paradise of Capri (the idyllic setting of the Oscar-winning movie Il Postino), Love Poems embraces the seascapes surrounding the poet and his love Matilde Urrutia, their waves and shores saturated with a new, yearning eroticism.

And when you appear

all the rivers sound

in my body, bells

shake the sky,

and a hymn fills the world.
Goodreads

My thoughts: Poetry...it is not my go-to genre but I felt that I needed some verses in romance to get me started this summer. Pablo Neruda has been a beloved poet since I was young and his love poems were the once I always turned to when feeling poetic. I got this little book of love poems to give to my love, but of course I read it first before giving it to him. 

This little book was a small collection of Pablo Neruda's poems that he wrote when he was on an island with his lover, Matilde. It was very obvious how much he adored her for all his passion for her was evident in these verses of love. What I loved best about this book was it had both the English and Spanish versions of his poems. The originals were of course in Spanish and I was a little skeptical that the English translations will convey the same emotions that the Spanish poems had. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the poems' feelings were still true in the English translations. I read both the English and Spanish versions of each of the poems and I kept falling in love with Neruda's work even more. He was truly a genius when it came to the art of words.

There were many poems that I adored in this collection but perhaps my most favorite one will be the one called Your Feet. The poem started off sweetly as Neruda praised his devotion towards his love but it's not until the last stanza that really stood out to me:

"But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me."

My heart melted when I read those words. And I have to admit I teared up a bit because that poem is so relevant to me.

I am so happy that my high school AP Spanish teacher forced us to read Pablo Neruda's works. Many of my classmates grumbled every time we had to read the poems but I was one of the very few who absolutely adored the Neruda's work. Pablo Neruda was a master when it came to the verse of love. I am so happy that I bought this small collection of his love poems. I highly recommend it.