Oh Neruda...if only you were still on this earth, I would write and tell you how much I have enjoyed reading your gorgeous poetry, sometimes in its original language.
That's right, we got into Neruda today!! (well...on March 13, I know it's late; still playing catch up, cut me some slack here please). I read his poem Ode to a Tomato in my Spanish III class my junior year, as well as another one of his Spanish poems last term. "Tonight I can Write..." is my favorite, even though it has a melancholy undertone. Neruda describes his lover as something fleeting that he lost, and he debates back and forth whether he really loved her or not. Even his description of the night sky is melancholy and depressing, 'The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
Neruda's later poems show a more defined sense of self awareness and of the world around him. Walking Around and I'm Explaining a Few Things described a more political undertone to his poetry. In the Walking Around, Neruda is "tired of being a man" going to the movies "all shrivelled up, impenetrable". The imagery that he uses, such as the cobblers' shops smelling of vinegar and the birds the color of sulphur and the intestines are very intense and describes dead things, which is what he is becoming the longer he stays in the city.
Neruda's poem I'm Explaining a Few Things describes to readers why he has stopped writing about things beauty. During his time as a consul in Spain, the Spanish Civil war broke out in 1936. Neruda wrote in his poem that instead of finding things of beauty to write about, the streets of Spain were filled with the blood of the dead children and all the houses were burning. In the last stanza, he repeats "come and see the blood on the streets" as a way to force the reader to realizing there were more important matters than beauty and philosophy.
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