Reviews - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

1.3k reviews for:

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Pablo Neruda

4.03 AVERAGE

spiderbea's review against another edition

5.0

cinco estrellas única y exclusivamente por el poema 20 me voy a tirar por un barranco

zo277's review against another edition

4.0

There's something lost when translated, from Spanish, It could be cadence or just the way words roll off the tongue compared to English. That said, Poem 19, that one will knock you on your ass, or at least, it did me.

I've read many quotes by Neruda, but never a whole work. His biography has always made him larger than life to me, mythical in a sense. I never wanted that myth to be challenged, fortunately, reading his work only made me admire him more.

It's not surprising that these poems were written as a young man, he really captures what human relationships feel like at that age, or at least, how they felt for me at that age. I'm increasingly more enamored with people who state how they feel in the most vulnerable of ways, ways we shy away from for fear of others seeing that vulnerability as weakness. There's an honesty to work like Neruda's, I hope to experience more work like his.

lonesome_reader's review against another edition

3.0

dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Pablo Neruda was admittedly my entryway to poetry when we read some of his works in high school, but I have fully outgrown him now. Nice to have revisited, nonetheless.