I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda
by Tony Leuzzi
O utside of Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda is perhaps the most beloved, well known poet of the Western hemisphere. Winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Chilean bard’s work is distinct for its passionate political engagement and direct emotional intensity, but to appraise the poets’ oeuvre—which approaches 6,000 pages—in a few concise phrases is impossible. Like Whitman, Neruda was, to put it mildly, prolific and expansive, and like his American predecessor uneven with regards to the quality of his published work. Thus, Neruda is best served by a competent editor who can distinguish the gems from the dross. Ilan Stavans is just such an editor. Sympathetic and intelligent, he was responsible for The Collected Poems of Pablo Neruda (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2003) which totaled almost 1000 pages. In that book, he crammed most of the poet’s best verse on every page, leaving very little white space in between the actual poems. But I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems is a more modest and judicial affair; it reduces the collection to a third of the original and never prints more than one poem on any given page. What is more, this edition is bilingual, so the original texts can stand side by side the translations. Therefore, at a fraction of the cost of Collected Poems, I Explain a Few Things is the perfect starter book for anyone wishing to become acquainted with Neruda. Stavans selects the best translations of the most representative poems across all stages of the poet’s career. Slyly, I Explain a Few Things offers a handful of poems absent from Collected Poems, all of which are valuable, even essential—and oddly absent from Stavan’s original book. Perhaps introducing them here was his attempt to answer one of the poet’s countless haunting observations: “Nothing existed without that fragment…”
Questions or Comments for Artvoice? Send e-mail to editorial@artvoice.com • Article last modified 12/19/2007
Print page
Subscribe to Feed (RSS 2.0)
