The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

I had read some of Neruda's works, but I wanted a large collection that surveyed a wide range of his output. There is no complete works of his English. It would take up several volumes if there was. This collection succeeds admirably in providing readers with as comprehensive as a survey as there is in the English language. The result is a rich and beautiful outpouring of one of the greatest poets of all time. The collection spans his entire career and focuses on what are generally considered Neruda's best works.

I love the fact that there are only occasional poems with the Spanish translation available. I love this because I only read in English, however, I do enjoy reading the occasional Spanish poem out loud to hear the rhythm and to improve my language just a little. I don't know why translators don't do this more often. It seems that we usually get either a complete bilingual edition, or a complete monolingual edition. A complete bilingual edition would have added an extra 800 pages or so. It does not make sense for a comprehensive volume for English readers. On another interesting note, some of the poems offer more than one translation, along with the Spanish original to compare them with. Also, the text features different translators. I like this because it will help me to select which translators to read in the future.

Now that I am almost finished with this volume, I can't wait to get all of the complete translations as individual books, assuming that no one does come out with a complete works in English. Neruda is brilliant, breathtaking, political, metaphorical, powerful... I could go on. He really has it all. I highly recommend this volume for anyone who wants a comprehensive book of his English. It is one of my favorite poetry books. I return to it often.

I was incredibly excited to get a hardcover of this at a thrift store, in nearly brand new condition, for fifty cents. Why someone threw it away I have no idea.
And while it's a large selection and for the most part is very good, it has some issues, first and foremost, inconsistency in translations. Since the book has dozens of translators throughout, it's going to be hit and miss. Fortunately, it's mostly hit, but I was sad to see that "Ode to Enchanted Light," one of my favorite Neruda poems, was butchered in the translation. There are a few other duds throughout, translators who knew nothing of Neruda or his flow.
Some people have complained that it isn't side by side bilingual, but this isn't too much of a problem for me. While it would be nice, it would also cause the book to be over 2,000 pages, and it's already huge.
My final thought is that while it's not perfect, it's a good book. I certainly wouldn't pay $40 for it (the hardback cover price), but buying a paperback or a used hardback would be a good move for lovers of Neruda.

Enough is written about this to make this a nice, simple review. Buy it. If you like his machoism and poetry, this is the one book you must own

Years ago I saw the movie Il Postino (The Postman)and came to know who Pablo Neruda was. I bought the soundtrack and discovered the poems being read by actors. Finally I discovered this book and am glad I purchased it. It is a joy to discover new poems each time I open the book.

I was very excited for this book, hoping to fill in gaps of my Neruda collection. but after reading it I was frustrated and disappointed, not only in the quality of many of the translations and the lack of the Spanish there next to the English, but I feel the editor left out many important poems while putting in a lot of Neruda's weaker work. It was clunky. I found a review in the New York Book Review on the web by the poet Charles Simic which explains my thoughts perfectly:

"As one would expect from an undertaking aiming to be so comprehensive in scope, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda is an uneven book. There are first-rate translations by John Felstiner, Margaret Sayers Peden, Jack Schmitt, Greg Simon, Alastair Reid and a dozen others alongside many mediocre ones. I'm not competent to judge the accuracy of individual translations, but I can compare their quality as poems since there are previous renderings of the same poems which seem to me far superior to the ones we have here. For instance, neither of the two versions of "Walking Around" in this book are as good as the one I quoted by H.R. Hays, or the one W.S. Merwin did years ago. As their worst, the translations do not convey the stylistic range and verbal integunity of the original, making Neruda sound instead like a Chilean Carl Sandburg.

The choice of poems is also at times debatable. In order to make the book representative of all of Neruda's work, Stavans has left out some well-known poems and included plenty of questionable ones..."

A missed opportunity. Una lastima.