The Yellow Heart (A Kagean Book) (Spanish Edition) [Paperback]

Pablo Neruda (Author), William O'Daly (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002 | Series: A Kagean Book

In the introduction to this bilingual volume, the translator reminds us: "Neruda spent the last forty years of his life making himself dangerous with his poetry... He came to see poetry as a moral act, with personal and communal responsibilities." But here, Neruda is at his playful and irreverent best. Whether writing a celebration, allegory, lament or self-parody, the poet declares the strong sense of an improvisational spirit. Highlighted as "Essential" by Library Journal.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Here is still another posthumous work by Neruda, the fifth published by Copper Canyon in a bilingual edition. Written just before Neruda's death from cancer in 1973, these poems present the usual themes and symbolisms yet have a lighter feel to them, as if the poet were tossing off as a joke the solemn end to a grand life, knowing full well, too, that Chile was about to be engulfed in a military coup backed by the United States. Nevertheless, the great Neruda is still in evidence: "Nobody knows what it is to swallow/the dust of defeat . . . and I alone was left, fenced in/ by fifty rabid kings." These few lines testify to the grandeur of Neruda's poetry at its best, as well as to his humanity. The passionate Latino poet comes through well in O'Daly's translation. Along with Vallejo and Lorca, Neruda's place in 20th-century poetry is well deserved. Essential.
- Ivan Arguelles, Univ. of California at Berkeley Lib.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Another
Another One
Another Thing
Disasters
Enigma For The Worried
The Heiroglyphic Chicken
The Hero
I Still Get Around
Integrations
Love Song
Memories Of Friendship
Morning With Air
Night Cats
One
Philosophy
Precious Stone
Reject The Lightning
A Statue In The Silence
Suburbs
Time That Wasn't Lost
An Untenable Situation
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press; 2 edition (January 1, 2002)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 1556591691
• ISBN-13: 978-1556591693
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,216,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pablo Neruda is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, his breadth of vision and wide range of themes are extraordinary, and his work continues to inspire new generations of writers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A shimmering work of loving translation., April 28, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Yellow Heart (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

This is a loving work of translation, as O'Daly does what is rare - transform Neruda's mastery of Spanish into a readable English lyricism. Fortunately for the reader, this is a feat O'Daly has accomplished in all his translations of Neruda's posthumous poetry. Compare this work to Ben Belitt's butcherous acts of translation in his "Five Decades" and you will know what a treasure O'Daly's work truly is. Anyone with any knowledge of the Spanish language will see what twisted mutations Belitt has given birth to in his translations. By comparison O'Daly preserves the tone and wonder of Neruda's incantations to life and love. For anyone seeking a start to Neruda, O'Daly's translations by Copper Canyon Press are indispensable gifts. For anyone seeking to understand the complexities of translation, buy Belitt's volume and compare it to O'Daly's transmutations of loving gold. Dan Vera ([e-mail])

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A decision to live, March 28, 2005

By 

Gary Sprandel (Frankfort, Kentucky) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Yellow Heart (A Kagean Book) (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

This short book includes 21 poems both in the original Spanish and their English translation. I can't speak of the quality of the translations but the poems are superb. Written after being diagnosed with cancer, these poems offer a certain decision to live ("Now and then, I am happy!"), and a certain freedom. There is a poem of the Ostrogodo family that "spoke so often of the dead ... that a strange thing happened"., of "a naked man who lived for many long years", "a poem of lightening and of disasters of raining ash", of "dismantled Cervantes", and a life in the suburbs. I'd probably recommend reading the poems first, then the introduction, since O'Daly perhaps offers too much interpretation on first reading.