An Ode To Pablo Neruda

Will Robinson, Alex Jacobs, Brad Theiss

Patterns Of His Work

• Themes:

– Love/Romance

– Natural Environment

– Politics/Surrealism

• Style:– Repetition– Short, organized stanzas– “An Ode to…”

• Language:-- Spanish Dialect-- Imagery-- Similes/Metaphors-- Personification

ODA PARA PLANCHAR

La poesia es blanca:sale del agua envuelta en gotas,se arruga, y se amontona,hay que extender la piel de este planeta,hay que planchar el mar de su blancuray van y van las manos,se alisan las sangradas superficiesy asi se hacen las cosas:las manos hacen cada dia el mundo,se une el fuego al acero,llegan el lino, el lienzo, y el tocuyodel combate de las lavanderiasy nace del la luz una paloma:la castidad regresa de la espuma.

AN ODE FOR IRONING

Poetry is white: it comes out of the water covered with drops,it wrinkles and piles up in heaps.We must spread out the whole skin of this planet,iron the white of the ocean:The hands go on moving,smoothing the sanctified surfaces,bringing all things to pass.Hands fashion each day of the world,fire is wedded to steel,the linens, the canvas, coarse cottons, emergefrom the waters of the washerwomen;a dove is born from the lightand chastity rearises from the foam.

Life as a Chilean

• NeftalÍ Ricardo Reyes Basoalto• Parral to Temuco (Mother’s Death)• “La Mañana”• Gabriela Mistral• Nobel Peace Prize-1971 • Death in Santiago-1973

Love Life

• Married 3 times• Political vs. Marital• Romance reflects upon

poetry

Politics/Communism

• Social justice and equality• Politics bring him around

the world• Communist Party of Chile• Ordered arrested

(Gonzalez Videla)• Return to Chile

The Flag

No one would like more than I to sayon the pillow where your eyelidstry to shut out the world for me.There too I would liketo let my blood sleepsurrounding your sweetness.

But stand up,you, stand up,but stand up for meand let us go off togetherto fight face to face

against the devil’s webs,against the system that distributes hunger,against organized misery.

Let’s go,and you, my star, next to me,newborn from my own clay,you will have found the hidden springand in the midst of the fire you will benext to me,with your wild eyes,raising my flag.

Stand Up For Me

Positive Criticism

• “Incomparable love poems”– Micheal Wood

• “Written the greatest surrealist poems”-- David Goodnough

Negative Criticism

• “A great bad poet”– Robert J. Clements

• “Rhetoric and propaganda”– Robert J. Clements

• “An obscure name in the United States”– John Felstiner

Agree/Disagree

• Agree:– “Incomparable love poems”– “Rhetoric and propaganda”

•Disagree: -- “A great bad poet”

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all dayI hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,your hands the color of a savage harvest,hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,hunting for you, for your hot heart,like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Sonnet XI

An Ode To Pablo Neruda• Hopeless Romantic• Chilean Communist• Famous works:

-Residencia en la tierra (1933)-España en el Corazón (1937)-Canto General (1950)-Obras Completas (1951, 1962)

• Nobel Prize Winner

“El amor es tan corto, olvidarse es tan largo”“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”