Product Description

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 un-sentimental directness and sensual precision. Here, too, 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 & 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114863 in Books
• Published on: 1995-12-07
• Original language: Spanish
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

About the Author
Born Neftal-Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in southern Chile in 1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. His first book, Crepusculario ('Twilight') was published in 1923. The following year, he published Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada ('Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair'), which turned him into a celebrity. In 1927 he began his long career as a diplomat, serving as Chilean consul in numerous places including Burma, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Mexico and France. He was elected to the Chilean Senate in 1943 but later expelled for being a Communist. In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile. For the next twenty-one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as the people's poet. During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He died of leukaemia in Santiago, Chile in 1973.

Customer Reviews

A great introduction
I first came across LOVE when I purchased following a viewing of IL POSTINO. It is a great introduction to the work of probably the most moving, passionate love poet who ever lived. The CD produced to accompany IL POSTINO also has a wonderful selection of Neruda's poems read by various actors.

Small but perfectly formed
The poems collected in this edition, associated with the film are moving and beautiful. However, the description given above is a little misleading as the edition includes both spanish and english texts.