Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Penguin Classics) [Audio Cassette]

Product Details

• Audio Cassette: 1 pages
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140862935
• ISBN-13: 978-0140862935
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,808,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars desire and longing, June 7, 2002

By 

NotATameLion (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Spanish Edition) (Mass Market Paperback)

I am a newcomer to the poetry of Pablo Neruda. "Twenty Poems and a Song of Despair" is simply one of the best volumes of poetry I have ever read. What a vast horizon opened up to me when I picked up this book! Rarely have I encountered a poet that so palpably evokes longing. Few other poets have Neruda's ability to weave images. These poems burrow into the heart.

My Spanish is not what it should be, but I was able to read most of the poetry here in the original. For those who know no Spanish, do not be deterred. This volume is the work of not just one but two masterful poets. Merwin's translations are amazing and wholly recommendable. Striking images and a yearning spirit fill the English translations as well as Neruda's originals.

I was also caught off guard by poem XVI. I was reading along, thinking how I had not read poetry this full of longing and desire since I last read Tagore's "Gitanjali" ..., when lo and behold, Poem XVI is a Spanish paraphrase of a Tagore poem...small world.

Neruda's poems are of filled with a powerful Eros. Yet, to me, they fall a little short in comparison to those of Tagore (whose love is a spiritual longing). However, the comparison is clearly between two giants of the art.

I give "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" a strong recommendation.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LUSH, March 3, 2000

By 

Andy Todes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Hardcover)

take the one-minute neruda test: "i want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees." there, how'd that feel? good, great, fantastic? plenty more where that came from.

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A writer that makes me want to learn Spanish, August 17, 2000

By 

Art History Professor (The wonderful Midwest) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Hardcover)

I have always been thankful that English is my first language, for I would hate to read a translated version of a Shakespeare play. Neruda (and perhaps Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is one writer that makes me wish I could read Spanish, for as amazing as his poems are in the translated English (and the are amazing), they must be pure and unabashed magic in their original language. Neruda is able to write on emotions that we occassionaly feel, and often long about, but can seldom work into spoken (yet alone written) words. By far, my favorite in this book of poems is Number 20, which has come to be known as "Tonight I Can Write..." Only after losing the love that I thought would last forever did the words "Love is so short, forgetting so long" sincerely ring true. Neruda's poems in general are amazing, and his ability to capture human emotions is remarkable.