PABLO NERUDA

“Love is so short, Forgetting is so long.”Selected Poems

(1904 (1904 1973)1973)

His Life -

-Born in Parrel, Chile on July 12th 1904

-His full name is Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto

- Started submitting poems to newspaper at age 13

- Became a published poet at 19 – 20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Life continued..

-1927 he was given honorary consulship by the Chilean government after graduating from The University of Chile which allowed him to travel the world

- in 1937 he joined the Republican movements in France and Spain

-In 1945 he was elected senator of the Communist Party in Chile

-In 1949 he was forced to go into hiding

-In 1970 almost runs for President

-1971 wins Nobel Prize for Literature

-1973 Dies of prostate cancer

F O R MThe Shape

Of the poem –

ClosedFORM

Restricted line l e n g t h, meter, rhyme and line groupings

kinds of closed form

tercet, blank verse

ballad

triplet

sonnet

People USE closed Form to

SHAPE and Polish MEANING

F O R M

O PEN F ORM

Open-form poetry – the open form eliminates the restrictions of the

closed form. Each open-form poem is thus unique and unpredictable

because it avoids traditional patters of organization to produce order.

Poetry of this time was once termed free verse to signify its liberation

from regular metrics and embrace of spoken rhythms. But open-form

poetry is not therefore disorganized or chaotic. Open-form poets have

instead sought new ways to arrange words and lines, new ways to

express thoughts and feelings, and new ways to order poetic experience.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry

And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her .

Tonight I Can Write

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

And these the last verses that I write for her.

Not Alone the Albatross Not with the spring are you awaited,

Not in the thirst of the corolla,

Not in the honey-house woven

Fiber by fiber from vines and clusters,

But in the storm, the streaming

Torrential dome over the reefs,

In the flaw rent by the dawn,

And even more, over the green pikes

Of defiance, in the ruinous

Solitude of the marine mesa.

Salt-betrothed, tempestuous doves,

You turned your back on every tainted wind

From land to face the wetted sea

And in the wild transparency submerged

Your celestial geometry of flight.

Each one sacred, and not alone the one

like a cyclonic drop, off the branch

Of the storm; not alone the one who nests

On the slopes of turmoil, but

Also the sea-gull of shaped snow,

The form of the guanay through the spray,

Silvered pack of platinum.

When the pelican fell like a tightened knot,

Plummeting its volume down,

And when prophecy swooped

On the extended wings of the albatross

And when the wind of the petrel plunged

Over eternity in movement,

Beyond the ancient cormorants,

My heart flowed into their cup.

TRANSLATING POETRY

OH EARTH, WAIT FOR ME

Turn me oh suntowards my native destiny,rain from the ancient forest,return to me the fragrance and the swordsthat fall from the sky,the solitary peace of field and rock,the moisture at the margins of the river,the scent of the larch,the wind, alive like a heartbeating among the remote flockof the great araucaria.

Earth, return to me your pure giftsthe towers of silence that rosefrom the solemnity of their roots:I want to return to being what I have not been,learn to return from such depthsthat amongst all the things of natureI could live or not live: no matterto be one more stone, the dark stone,the pure stone that is carried by the river.

Return me, oh sun,

to my wild destiny,

rain of the ancient wood.

Bring me back its aroma, and the swords

that fall from the sky,

the solitary peace of pasture and rock,

the damp at the river-margins, the smell of the larch tree, the wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded restlessness of the towering araucaria. Earth, give me back your pure gifts, the towers of silence which rose from the solemnity of their roots. I want to go back to being what I have not been, and so learn to go back from such deeps that amongst all natural things I could live or not live, it does not matter to be one stone more, that dark stone, the pure stone which the river bears away.

WORKS CITED

-http://www.mail-archive.com/sinister@majordomo.net/2001-month-02/msg00128.html

-www.amazon.com

-www.inkas.com

-www.wikipedia.com

Turn, Nathaniel; Selected Pomes by Pablo Neruda; Paperback: Publisher: Mariner Books; Bilingual edition (September 10, 1990) ISBN: 0395544181