I made these sonnets out of wood; I gave them the sound of that opaque pure substance, and that is how they should reach your ears. Walking in forests or on beaches, along hidden lakes, in latitudes sprinkled with ashes, you and I have picked up pieces of pure bark, pieces of wood subject to the comings and goings of water and the weather. Out of such softened relics, then, with hatchet and machete and pocketknife, I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built litt...

*****5 Stunning Stars***** I was utterly swept away by the beauty of these love sonnets.Someone had sent me a quote from one of them, I fell in love with it...and just had to read more.... I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or prideso I love you because I know no other way than thiswhere I does not exist, nor youso close that your hand on my chest is my hand,so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. How..

Probably my most favorite poet of contemporary times. Neruda uses language and nature to bring out the truthfulness of beauty, desire, love, and lust. The honesty and comparisons of love to simple and pure things in nature makes me wish I knew spanish and could read his writings in his native language.He also divides his sonnets into the catagories of morning, afternoon, and night, with each infiltrating new or different dimensions of love. Not always happy or unrealalistic, Neruda is honest in

8.5/10I have been consuming poetry in the last few months at an inordinate rate. I enter phases -- cycles in my life where it's easier to read poetry than prose; more importantly, where my life demands poetry more than it does prose. It's silly, in that context, to add long passages of my boring prose to describe what Neruda does perfectly in poems. All I can add is, if you haven't read Neruda, or haven't read him lately, do your soul a favour and pick up this little book, even if you borrow it

and to me she quoted him..."no one else, love, will sleep in my dreams. you will go,we will go together, over the waters of time.no one else will travel through the shadows with me,only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon."thus, i knew for sure.

I have been mesmerized with the persona of Pablo Neruda since I saw the film version of Postman, The/ Il Postino back in high school. In that depiction, Neruda is an exiled poet living in Italy during the rise of Mussolini while there befriends his mail carrier in a charming story. Later, having read many novels and memoirs by Isabel Allende, I have been privileged to learn of her Chilean perspective of Neruda as the nation's poet laureate, especially during Pinochet's 1973 coup d'état. Yet, unt...

As my fourth Neruda poetry collection, 100 Love Sonnets is undoubtedly lacking compared to Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, The Captain’s Verses, and Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon. Akin to intimacy and body landscapes among Gerard Schlosser’s paintings, Neruda paints love in a spectrum of emotions and shades; from devotion to inquisition to desolation, from red to mauve to blue. However the words that convey them can be sparse. With such limitation it is no wonder the sonnets can b...

I'm willing to admit that it's possible that other people in the world have been as in love with someone as Pablo Neruda was, but no one has ever expressed it so beautifully or ardently. With the eloquence and passion of a hundred poets, Neruda crafts lines that honor love so well that most people don't even know that love could BE so consuming or so light, so natural or so still. What Pablo Neruda does for love poetry- and for all poetry, for that matter- is a gift to the world. Muchas gracias,...

Is the rose naked,Or is that her only dress?You won't believe how beautiful the images these two short lines conjure in my head, intricate rose blooms, luscious, red petals spinning in the dark, red folds of silk, dragging on the floor to the dark chambers of a secret lover.There are lone cemeteries,tombs full of soundless bones,the heart threading a tunnel,a dark, dark tunnel:like a wreck we die to the very core,as if drowning at the heartor collapsing inside from skin to soulNow that is just s...

Super simply put, Neruda is word sex. I am not a love poems lover, but these sonnets are so nakedly a lover's poems that in this case I'm head over heels. In seriousness, these are brilliant in translation but I especially adored the original Spanish as it really was the work at its most lyrically organic awesomeness. (And my Spanish is wobbly at best).And organic is really the only word I'd use to describe these...Neruda himself, probably self-depricatingly (but un-self-consciously razor-accura...

"Y cuando esté recién lavado el mundonacerán otros ojos en el aguay crecerá sin lágrimas el trigo."The first time I read this collection in its entirety, I was wonderstruck by Sonnet XVI, "Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres," which I learnt to love with even more intensity once I became able to appreciate the original Spanish version and which remains my absolute favourite. In these scary times, I felt it was time for me for me to finally sit down and reread methodically all One Hundred of Nerud...

It was one of those days. The kids flooded the bathroom, the cat vomited on my carpet, a toothbrush got lodged down the drain. One of those days. It was not a day to start a Sarah Vowell book about the beginnings of Hawaii… No, not today. Today, I grabbed the bottle of Sangria and sat down with this. Again, I have to thank Goodreads for introducing me to Bells (shout out to Bells! Woot! Woot!) who introduced me to Pablo. Imagine living my whole life and not knowing Pablo!! The horror!There is a

My comment would be: 'written on the wings of butterflies.'"I want you to knowone thing.You know how this is:if I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashor the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists,aromas, light, metals,were little boatsthat sailtoward those isles of yours that wait for me.Well, now,if little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving you little by little...

I really sometimes wonder if I love right, love correctly, or if I love at all and am not just miming what I think, what I want, I feel. For me I love all at once, I fall very fast, but rarely. I will go long loveless periods through life, happy and unthinking of what passions I am missing, unenvious of people paired in love, like a bright new boat at sea not thinking at all of the harbor. And suddenly in a lightning flash (un coup de foudre), I am whipped up into a maelstrom of passion and angu...

I am not an avid reader of poetry nor will ever claim to fully understand the genre. But these two following sonnets: XVII & LXXXI by Neruda took a hold of my heart, my soul, touch me so deeply and intensely. They make me long for the day that I am in a relationship that will encompass & possess both the true essence and magnitude of unconditional love that is written in each one of these sonnets. I fully know that one day it will happen and when it does, it will take hold of me, my CORE and I w...

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadows and soul.I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;So I love you be...

need I say more......Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo NerudaI do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topazor the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you stra...

Cien Sonetos De Amor = 100 Love Sonnets, Pablo NerudaAgainst the backdrop of Isla Negra - the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific - the poet sets the poems in celebration of his love. The subject of that love is Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, Pablo's 'beloved wife'. Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is longand I will be waiting for you, as in an empty statio...

When I got tired of copying love poems from the Chinese and Japanese into urgent, wretched note cards to lovers who were unattainable (and I'm a genius at finding unattainable characters to pine after)... that's when I turned to Pablo Neruda. He's even better than Asian poets at crafting throbbing, passionate, wounded phrases of affection:I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrencerisen from the earth, l...

tie your heart at night to mine, loveand both will defeat the darkness like twin drums beating in the forest against the heavy wall of wet leaves