Book Review: Twenty Love Poems & A Song of Despair

Book #4

“The numberless heart of the wind
beating above our loving silence” The Morning is Full, Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda. Ever since I started writing poetry, anyone who knew my reading interests and my writing style would tell me to read Neruda. A writer I knew who I greatly admired listed Neruda as his biggest influence. Neruda, Neruda, Neruda. Here’s a little fact about me: the more hype there is about someone, the more I’m told to do something, the less likely it is to get done.

Anyway. When people finally stopped bugging about reading him, I bought this collection. I read it today. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that these were some of his earliest poems (he was 19), but I’m not enthralled. That’s not to say there weren’t lines I loved (like the lines I quoted above), or lines that shocked me for a second — “I want / to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees” — but for the most part I was underwhelmed. There were a couple of poems that made me want to read more, however. Like #20, “Tonight I Can Write”. I adore it. I adore it completely.

So. This particular collection? Not astounding. But you can bet your ass I’ll look for more of his writing to see how the boy wrote as a man.