Neruda and Vallejo.

Selected poems.

edited and a new preface by Robert Bly.

translations by Robert Bly, John Knoepfle, and James Wright.

CONTENTS.

READING NERUDA AND VALLEJO IN THE 1990S.

Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda REFUSING TO BE THEOCRITUS.

From VEINTE POEMAS DE AMOR Y UNA CANCIN DESESPERADA "Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos"

"Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs"

"Te recuerdo como eras en el ltimo otono"

"I remember you as you were that final autumn"

From RESIDENCIA EN LA TIERRA I AND II.

Solo la muerte Nothing but Death Walking Around.

Walking Around.

Arte Poetica The Art of Poetry Entierro en el este Funeral in the East Caballero solo Gentleman Without Company Sonata y destrucciones Sonata and Destructions La calle destruida The Ruined Street Melancola en las familias Melancholy Inside Families Agua s.e.xual s.e.xual Water No hay olvido (Sonata) There Is No Forgetfulness (Sonata) From TERCERA RESIDENCIA Bruselas.

Brussels.

From CANTO GENERAL.

Algunas bestias.

Some Beasts.

Alturas de Macchu Picchu, III The Heights of Macchu Picchu, III La Cabeza en el palo.

The Head on the Pole Las agonas.

Anguish of Death Descubridores de Chile Discoverers of Chile Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Toussaint L'Ouverture.

La United Fruit Co.

The United Fruit Co.

Hambre en el sur.

Hunger in the South Juventud Youth Los dictadores.

The Dictators America, no invoco tu nombre en vano America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope Hymno y regreso.

Hymn and Return.

Cristbal Miranda.

Cristobal Miranda.

Que despierte el lenador I Wish the Woodcutter Would Wake Up.

"Era el otono de las uvas"

"It was the grape's autumn"

La huelga.

The Strike Carta a Miguel Otero Silva, en Caracas.

Letter to Miguel Otero Silva, in Caracas Reciben rdenes contra Chile They Receive Instructions Against Chile Los enigmas Enigmas Companeros de viaje Friends on the Road.

From ODAS ELEMENTALES Oda a los calcetines Ode to My Socks.

Oda a la sanda Ode to the Watermelon Oda a la sal Ode to Salt.

THE LAMB AND THE PINE CONE.

(An Interview with Pablo Neruda by Robert Bly).

Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo.

WHAT IF AFTER SO MANY WINGS OF BIRDS.

THOUGHTS ON CESAR VALLEJO.

From LOS HERALDOS NEGROS Los heraldos negros The Black Riders La arana.

The Spider Romera Pilgrimage.

Babel Babble Deshojacin sagrada A Divine Falling of Leaves La copa negra The Black Cup Heces Down to the Dregs Medialuz Twilight gape.

Agape Rosa Blanca White Rose El pan nuestro Our Daily Bread Pagana Pagan Woman Los dados eternos The Eternal Dice Los anillos fatigados The Weary Circles Dios G.o.d Los arrieros The Mule Drivers Los pasos lejanos The Distant Footsteps A mi hermano Miguel To My Brother Miguel Espergesia Have You Anything to Say in Your Defense?

From TRILCE III "Las personas mayores"

"What time are the big people"

XV "En el rincn aquel, donde dormimos juntos"

"In that corner, where we slept together"

XXIV "Al borde de un sepulcro florecido"

"At the border of a flowering grave"

XLV "Me desvinculo del mar"

"I am freed from the burdens of the sea"

LXXVII "Graniza tanto, como para que yo recuerde"

"So much hail that I remember"

From CODIGO CIVIL and POEMAS HUMANOS El buen sentido The Right Meaning Voy a hablar de la esperanza I Am Going To Talk About Hope "Quedeme a calentar la tinta en que me ahogo"

"I stayed here, warming the ink in which I drown"

Poema para ser leido y cantado Poem To Be Read and Sung Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca Black Stone Lying on a White Stone Nomina de huesos The Rollcall of Bones "En el momento en que el tenista lanza magistralmente"

"The tennis player, in the instant he majestically"

"Un pilar soportando consuelos"

"One pillar holding up consolations"

"Y no me digan nada"

"And don't bother telling me anything"

"Y bien? Te sana el metaloide plido?"

"And so? The pale metalloid heals you?"

"Tengo un miedo terrible de ser un animal"

"I have a terrible fear of being an animal"

"Y si despues de tantas palabras"

"And what if after so many words"

"La clera que quiebra al hombre en ninos"

"The anger that breaks a man down into boys"

From ESPAA, APARTA DE M ESTE CLIZ Masa.

Ma.s.ses.

READING NERUDA AND VALLEJO IN THE 1990S.

Why is it important to read Pablo Neruda now? Because after twelve years of Reagan and Bush we find in him a well of compa.s.sion. His mother's death, his father's death, the rain, broke open his heart. We look in and see compa.s.sion for adolescents, for workers, for schoolteachers, for the loneliness of salt.

Competent, chill-hearted, respectable workshop poems flood North American bookstores; but opening Pablo Neruda's poems, readers bite into sea-potatoes, Chilean lions made of sugar, drops of marmalade and blood, a hurricane of gelatin, a tail of harsh horsehair, elephants that fall from the sky. As Neruda says: a tongue of rotten dust is moving forward over the cities movie posters in which the panther is wrestling with thunder.

His love of life never falters. His love of women never falters. He loves them, the more unpredictable the better; he remembers Josie Bliss, who was so wild and nearly killed him twice with her knife; but when she went outside at night to p.i.s.s, the sound was like honey. We know he sits morning after morning at a wobbly table near the sea, writing images blown in from the farthest reaches of his brain, with a discipline fitting for a Mayan weaver woman or a copper craftsman in a North African market. He wrote the greatest long poem so far created on American ground, that is Canto General. Its 450 poems include careful nature observation, geology, accounts of European invasion, North American meddling, and rage.