Poems in Spanish with parallel English translations.

A career-spanning volume charting the Nobel laureate’s work in the ode form Pablo Neruda was a master of the ode, which he conceived as an homage to just about everything that surrounded him, from an artichoke to the clouds in the sky, from the moon to his own friendship with Federico García Lorca and his favorite places in Chile. He was in his late forties when he committed himself to writing an ode a week, and in the end he produced a total of 225, which are dispersed throughout his varied oeuvre. This bilingual volume, edited by Ilan Stavans, a distinguished translator and scholar of Latin American literature, gathers all Neruda’s odes for the first time in any language. Rendered into English by an assortment of accomplished translators, including Philip Levine, Paul Muldoon, Mark Strand, and Margaret Sayers Peden, collectively they read like the personal diary of a man in search of meaning who sings to life itself, to our connections to one another, and to the place we have in nature and the cosmos. All the Odes is also a lasting statement on the role of poetry as a lightning rod during tumultuous times.

"Laughter is the language of the soul," Pablo Neruda said. Among the most lasting voices of the most tumultuous (in his own words, "the saddest") century, a witness and a chronicler of its most decisive events, he is the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, the emblem of the engaged poet, an artist whose heart, always with the people, is literally consumed by passion. His work, oscillating from epic meditations on politics and history to intimate reflections on animals, food, and everyday objects, is filled with humor and affection. This bilingual selection of more than fifty of Neruda's best poems, edited and with an introduction by the distinguished Latin American scholar Ilan Stavans and brilliantly translated by an array of well-known poets, also includes some poems previously unavailable in English. I Explain a Few Things distills the poet's brilliance to its most essential and illuminates Neruda's commitment to using the pen as a calibrator for his age.

The beloved odes written by Chilean poet and 1971 Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda demonstrate his astonishing ability to present ordinary items in new and surprising ways. The poems are gathered from Odas elementales (Elemental Odes), 1954; Nuevas odas elementals (New Elemental Odes), 1956; Tercer libro de odas, (Third Book of Odes), 1957; and Navegaciones y regresos (Voyages and Homecomings), 1959. This anthology is the most complete selection of Neruda's work to appear in English, in an excellent bilingual format featuring translations by Maria Jacketti, an expert of Pablo Neruda's work.

A bilingual edition that makes available for the first time a substantial selection of Neruda's Elemental Odes, originally published in Spanish in three volumes. The Odes were written in the mid-fifties when Neruda was at the height of his powers, and are explorations and celebrations of man's relation to the natural and man-made world. They are straightforward and immediate and are considered his most approachable and popular work. 67 odes are printed in this volume of which about a dozen have appeared (in different translations) in English collections of Neruda before.

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon, thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light, what obscure brilliance opens between your columns? What ancient night does a man touch with his senses? Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour: loving is a clash of lightning-bolts and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey. The poetry of Pablo Neruda is beloved worldwide for its passion, humor, and exceptional accessibility. The nearly fifty poems selected for this collection and translated by Stephen Mitchell—widely praised for his original and definitive translations of spiritual writings and poetry—focus on Neruda's mature period, when the poet was in his fifties. A bilingual volume, with Neruda's original Spanish text facing Mitchell's English translation, it will bring Neruda's sensuous work to vibrant life for a whole new generation of readers.