Review by Booklist Review
The ode, a form with origins in Greek choral poetry, was revived in Elizabethan lyric poetry. Since then, its emphasis has been shifted to rhetorical apostrophization expounding on the nature of things and ideas. Perhaps no modern poet is so practiced a composer of odes as Neruda, who vowed to pen one a week. This enormous collection features a wide range of his best imagery (the verdant texture of corn's green hair, green needles of rain), odes that express his discomfiting sympathy for Stalinist politics, and many that are focused on men and insemination and that turn attention back to the poet with a wink. The greatest draw of this bilingual edition is editor Stavans' decision to present the whole Chilean enchilada, as it were, from the enchantingly narrative ( Ode to the Eye ) to the less excellent and problematically obscure ( Ode to Clarity ). The able translators, including poets Jane Hirshfield, Paul Muldoon, and W. S. Merwin, illuminate the original Spanish, and 70 poems have been translated for the first time into English. A substantial gathering of universally influential work.--Baez, Diego Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Chilean Nobel laureate, who died in 1973, combined stratospheric powers of invention with a fecundity that bordered on the prolix; among his many creations were 225 "odes," almost all in very short lines, connecting accessible, democratic vocabulary to exalted emotion. Most of the odes date from the 1950s; some odes on household objects (to a lemon, to a potato) remain much imitated in English. Stavans says he is the first to gather all the odes, including very late, very early, and more formal outliers. Stavans and a few lesser-known translators account for a large majority of translations here, though W. S. Merwin and Stephen Mitchell also appear. Along with a fishing boat, an elephant, vegetables, French fries, New Year's Day, and other this-worldly phenomena, Neruda's odes show both his communist and romantic sides, praising love itself, "clarity," "broken things," and V. I. Lenin. This enormous book provides an education of sorts into Neruda's contexts as well as his effusive mind. Daunting to read straight through, sometimes banal, the volume nonetheless has profuse delights: Neruda lauds seagulls "as you are:/ your insatiable voraciousness,/ your screech in the rain," while "Ode to Laziness" begins "Yesterday I felt this ode/ would not get off the floor." (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Here, appearing in one place for the first time, are all 250 odes (including some 70 previously untranslated) written by Nobel Prize-winner Neruda, possibly the best-selling foreign-language poet of all time in the United States. Although this anthology features 20 translators, including Margaret Sayers Peden and Ken Krabbenhoft, nearly half of the translations are by Stavans, a Latin Americanist who provides an introduction and identifies obscure references.ÅAs a translator Stavans claims to be a purist, and his purism can sometimes lead to awkwardly literal phraseologies (e.g., "From how many places/ disseminated across the geography/ light from here underachieved its elevation/ in triumphant unity"). Most of Neruda's odes concern ordinary things, such as a shoe, a lemon, or a cat; some celebrate places such as Ceylon or names on the map of Venezuela; still others are addressed to individuals such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Walt Whitman, whom Neruda recognizes as his greatest poetic influence,Åand Paul Robeson, who "broke the silence of the rivers/ when they were dumb / because of the blood they carried." VERDICTÅReaders of poetry can't afford to miss this.-Jack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
