Love - Softcover

"Neruda is a monster. Like all great epic monsters, when he's not bellowing, preaching or lamenting, he is capable of amazing delicacy and contained passion, especially in the lyrical poems - sonnets, romances, and free-verse 'odes' - which are netted in this book. It dazzlingly distills a profound, tender imagination" (Michael Schmidt)

"The poems today remain as urgently gorgeous as freshly picked flowers" (Carol Ann Duffy Daily Telegraph)

Poems from the Film Il Postino

The poems collected in this book are at the heart of the film Il Postino, a cinematic fantasy spun from an apocryphal incident in the life of the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda. Together they show why many consider Neruda to be the finest love poet of the century. Few writers of any age have described the pleasures and torments of erotic love with such unsentimental directness and sensual precision.

Here we find Neruda at his most accessible, the language of his odes and lyrics refined to the point at which it achieves, in critic Jean Franco's words, "the naturalness of song". This short selection draws on work from throughout his writing life, from the famous early collection Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair (1924) to the key works of his maturity, Residence on Earth (1935), Elemental Odes (1954) and the autobiographical Memorial de Isla Negra (1964). It offers an enticing glimpse of one of modern poetry's greatest masters.