Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Apr 2013 · Wings Press

About this ebook

A translation of Pablo Neruda's early collections of odes, this book features poems that are addressed to hope and to gloom, to numbers and to the atom, to blue flowers and to artichokes. Reflecting the lucent, candid vitality driving Neruda's charming accounts, these poems celebrate things big and the small: even lamentations become commemorations. Compassionately amused one moment then sobered by injustice and supportive of resistance the next, this bilingual compilation will appeal to fans of one of the 20th century's most popular poets.

About the author

Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Ferral, Chile on July 12, 1904. In 1923 he sold all of his possessions to finance the publication of his first book, Crepusculario (Twilight), which he published under the pseudonym Pablo Neruda. Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), which was published the following year, made him a celebrity and allowed him to stop his studies to devote himself to poetry. His other works include España en el Corazón, Canto General, Las Uvas y el Viento, and Para Nacer He Nacido. He received numerous awards including the World Peace Prize with Paul Robeson and Pablo Picasso in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature for his poetry in 1971. He died of leukemia on September 23, 1973.