- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; Bilingual edition (Jan 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0374512388
- ISBN-13: 978-0374512385
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.9 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 675,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
One of Pablo Neruda's own favorites among his books, Extravagaria marks an important stage in the progress of his poetry. It was written at the point in his life when he had returned to Chile after many wanderings and moved to Isla Negra on the Pacific coast. These writings celebrate this coming to rest, this rediscovery of the sea and the land, for in Extravagaria Neruda evolved a lyric poetry that is decidedly more personal than his earlier work. Written in what he called his "autumnal" period, the sixty-eight poems range from the wistful to the exultant, combining psalm and speculation, meditation and humorous aside.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda had a prolific and extraordinarily varied output of poetry. This book was my introduction to him 25 years ago, when I knew very little Spanish, and so had to rely on Alistair Reid's parallel translations. It is still my favourite now, from a bookshelf full of Neruda's work. The poems are accessible but deep, and the translations do remarkably good justice to Neruda's powerful images and his matchless use of the subtleties of Spanish. In other words, an ideal book for any lover of poetry, whether or not you understand Spanish.
There are poems of beautiful simplicity:
I copy out mountains, rivers, clouds. / I take my pen from my pocket. I note down / a bird in its rising / or a spider in its little silkworks. / Nothing else crosses my mind. I am air, / clear air, where the wheat is waving, / where a bird's flight moves me, the uncertain / fall of a leaf, the globular / eye of a fish unmoving in the lake, / the statues sailing in the clouds, / the intricate variations of the rain.
[from Pastoral]
And poems of surreal poignancy:
The child's foot is not yet aware it's a foot, / and would like to be a butterfly or an apple.
But in time, stones and bits of glass, / streets, ladders, / and the paths in the rough earth / go on teaching the foot that it cannot fly, / cannot be fruit bulging on the branch. / Then, the child's foot / is defeated, falls / in the battle, / is a prisoner / condemned to live in a shoe.
Bit by bit, in that dark, / it grows to know the world in its own way, / out of touch with its fellow, enclosed, / feeling out life like a blind man.
[from To the foot from its child]
There are poems for every mood, poems of politics, humourous poems, poems of despair, poems of passion and love and joy.
The book is enlivened throughout by a delicacy of touch, by constant surprises as Neruda looks below the skin of ordinary reality to find deep and breathtaking insights and images. No review can do it justice - get hold of a copy!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Touching this world and the next and loving and hating both
29 Aug 1999
Format:Paperback
Pablo touched me as no poet that I have read in the last 25 years. His lines particularly sees the world with wisened eyes, writen in his later days. He embraces his past occationally crushing it with bittersweet energy. At the same time he looks forward to rest and what's next. He never stopped Becoming, as Sarte would say, through the years. "Her" declares the need and joy of loving and working life together with his spouse. "Larnyx" chills with news from the doctor that all of humanity dreads.
The spanish on the facing page lets one glimpse at hidden meanings, reaching back for our Spanish 101 or Elementary Latin, a treat. If you buy one poetry book this year, this should be the one. If you are silver haired, as I, then this is the poetry of the decade for you.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
THE MOST PROLIFIC AND INFLUENTIAL POET OF SPANISH LANGUAGE.
31 May 1999
Format:Paperback
One of the most interesting books I have ever read. It taught me that there's poetry in every movement we make and every moment we live.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Beautiful!
10 Jan 2005
Format:Paperback
A wonderful collection of Naruda's work. There is a sense of settling down in these collection of his work that is really quite beautiful. I also find Alastair Reid's translation more beautiful than others I've seen. The original spanish text on the opposite page is also nice and handy to have.
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