James Laughlin must be turning in his grave. New Directions, one of the greatest presses in 20th Century literary history, has sunk to the wrong directions now in the 21st: they are letting marketing triumph over literary ethics and literature itself: This "Love Poems" is just a slick deceptive cover of Neruda's single book, "The Captain's Verses," which in itself is a great book, an important book in Neruda's oeuvre, with a good translation by Donald Walsh-- but to be so deceptive and re-title it as a marketing gimmick?
I returned this book to Amazon after I found out what was underneath the false cover.
They say "in later editions, these verses became the most celebrated of the Noble Prize winner's oeuvre" In later editions? This is one edition, and it's not true that it "collects Neruda's most passionate verses." It collects some of them, but with The Captain's Verses there's a bunch of mediocre poems. Neruda had a high batting average, but not every poem he wrote was outstanding. Frankly, I'm peeved at ND for this gimmickry. The great press under Laughlin that took risks and brought us William Carlos Williams, Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, Lawrence Ferlinghetti-- you want a vanguard press that would never succumb to commercialism over the inherent principles of literature-- Ferlinghetti's City Lights-- If you want Neruda's love poetry, check out his The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems-- it truly is the essence of Pablo, with some of his best love poems. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)is of course one of poetry's great classics, but it only represents the voice of Neruda in his twenties, without the broad scope and some of his best love lyrcis throughout one of the most prolific careers in the history of modern poetry. 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (Texas Pan American Series) has some great Neruda love poems, but the majority, trully, aren't so great. And personally, along with others I know, feel that much of the inherent power of Neruda's poems in this book are lost in Tapscott's flat translations. If you do want The Captain's Verses, show New Directions that you can't judge--or change, for marketing reasons--a book by its cover, and get the original, The Captain's Verses