Blog #4 - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
As I began to read Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, I found myself to be overwhelmed by the amount of descriptive text that Pablo Neruda used. It has been a while since I have read any poetry, and the plethora of descriptions used while still feeling quite vague and open was interesting to contrast.
It is incredible to think that Neruda was only 19 when this collection of poems was published. I think back to the level of emotions and the intensity in which I felt them when I was a very young adult, and through that lens I have more appreciation for his writings. The vulnerability that he portrays in his poems, and his ability to verbalize it feels very raw.
The contrast between the first twenty love poems and The Song of Despair was vivid, and it was interesting to see how the physical structure of his last poem compared to the unstructured 20 poems previously. Through reading The Song of Despair, I really felt the emotion in the constant repetition of the line "in you everything sank". In thinking about the intensity in which he discovered love in the first 20 poems, he matched his heartbreak with that same level of intensity. After reading 20 poems that used nature as a metaphor and comparison point to try and explain the beginning and peak and slow decline of his relationship and the love he felt, it was beautiful and jarring to see how, just as quickly, the intense grief and heartbreak being experienced by Neruda could also be explained through the destructive side of nature.
Upon listening to the lecture interview between Jon Beasley-Murray and Brianne Orr-Alvarez, it was interesting to hear the perspective that the woman was, in a sense disposable and briefly needed, and more or less absent throughout the poems. When I first read through the poems, I felt as though the silence from the woman was the same silence that the natural world brings. Almost as though she is so incredible that no words can be said to explain her depth. Nature does not try to explain itself, it just leaves you in awe. I do appreciate this other perspective, and upon rereading the poems definitely agree more so with the former perspective.
In Poem V, So That You Will Hear Me, Neruda uses the phrase "you fill everything" to describe this woman. In a sense, "you fill everything" and "in you everything sank" are two sides of the same coin, just two different states of mind.
My question for discussion: Which poem spoke most to you? What was your favourite visual throughout the series in this collection of poems?
That "silence of Nature" has been compared many times with feminine qualities, of course an idea from patriarchal mentalities. You have paid a lot of attention to key points in the poems. Like several of your colleagues, that tension between the poetic richness and the staleness of the content has made you ask very good questions to the text. I think this makes for a good class discussion.
ReplyDelete"I felt as though the silence from the woman was the same silence that the natural world brings." I really like this comparison between the woman and nature. I also enjoyed your in-depth analyses of the emotions portrayed by the poems. Amazing blogpost! To answer your question, my favourite poem was chapter 5, "So That You Will Hear Me." It was just so resonating--sincere and desperate. My favourate visual was "I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees" (46-47).
ReplyDelete- Daniel Choi
The poem that spoke out to me the most is "Tonight I Can Write" on page 47. I really liked it because you can feel the sadness and pain he is enduring. One line in particular "to think that I don't have her, to feel that I have lost her" really almost stung me in a way because I have felt emotions that i could describe in that way.
ReplyDeleteHi Cadence, Great post! I was also really struck by all the descriptive writings. It's also super interesting what you were saying about the lines from poem V being on two sides of the same coin. For me, my favourite poem was "Drunk with Pines". Much like you were saying in the beginning about how descriptive Neruda is, I found myself really getting placed in nature for this poem, which was really cool because it romanticized nature in a way I haven't read before.
ReplyDeleteHi! I really enjoyed your blog post. I also found the descriptive writings to be quite overwhelming at first. The contrast between the love poems, especially in the beginning, and "The Song of Despair" made the emotions more present and vivid. It was interesting to read his journey through love and all the different emotions he experienced. In regards to your question, my favorite line is "In you is the illusion of each day" from "Your Breast Is Enough."
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