Pablo Neruda: If You Forget Me

Pablo Neruda breaks my heart in the best way. I can’t pick a favorite, but If You Forget Me is up there. His work is best read in Spanish as he wrote it, there is something that gets lost in translation but the work is still beautiful nonetheless in English. He evokes emotion with his words and I dip into my little Neruda collection from time to time just to savor it.

everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
-read the poem in its entirety here

What do you think of this one?

April is National Poetry Month, follow this link for more.

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disclaimer:
The photo above is my own and is not to be removed from this post.

Killing The Love

Seeing how April is National Poetry Month, I wanted to share a few of my favorite poems these few weeks.  I like Anne Sexton so much because her poetry is so raw. She put it all out there and there is something to be said for that. Her poems are passionate and intense.

A snippet from a favorite of hers called “Killing the Love”. 

I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss.
I am pushing knives through the hands
that created two into one.
Our hands do not bleed at this,
they lie still in their dishonor….

Read the poem in its entirety here: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/killing-the-love/

What do you think of this one? Do you have a favorite Anne Sexton poem, or a favorite by another poet?

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your day.

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disclaimer:
The photo above is my own and not to be removed from this post.

Book Tour: WTF by Laura Foley

source: Free review copy courtesy of Poetic Book Tours
title: WTF
author: Laura Foley
genre: poetry
published: 2017
pages: 29
first line: The night before his imprisonment….

Blurb:
Laura Foley’s “WTF” refers to her father’s initials and, slyly, to the abbreviated colloquial exclamation, in a pun that laughs and cuts, in this reckoning with a fraught father-daughter relationship. These spare poems communicate more like snapshots than narrative lyrics, beginning with sympathy and gratitude, moving through disappointment, anger and resentment, without ever losing compassion, as Foley examines her father’s formative WWII experiences and, consequently, how he shaped her experience and character, ending with a positive recognition of her father in herself.

Read some sample poems here: https://www.readcwbooks.com/foley_poems.html

My thoughts:
I enjoy reading poetry very much and as soon as I saw the blurb and title for WTF by Laura Foley it caught my attention. “WTF” are her father’s initials, William Thomas Foley, and she wrote this collection in his memory. WTF was a WWII vet and most of the twenty poems here reflect on this. A few of the poems are about his being a POW, about playing cards with him and about her parents getting divorced.

Born twelve years later, I learn
for him the war is never over.
-WTF by Laura Foley

This is a quiet collection and poetry comes from the heart, the best kind I think comes from heartache and I felt that in this set.

Among the Lost (In Dante’s Wake) by Seth Steinzor

source: Free review copy courtesy of Poetic Book Tours
title: Among the Lost (In Dante’s Wake) by Seth Steinzor
genre: poetry/fiction
published: November 2016
pages: 228

blurb:
Among the Lost, set in the modern American rust belt, is a meditation drawn from Dante’s Purgatorio. To Dante, Purgatory was the mountain where souls not damned went after death to cleanse themselves of sin in preparation for entering Paradise. What, Steinzor asks, are we preparing ourselves for, having lost the fear of hell and the hope of heaven, in the course of our daily urban existence? And whatever that is, how do we go about preparing for it?.

my thoughts:
Among the Lost (In Dante’s Wake) is book 2 in Seth Steinzor’s trilogy based on Dante’s Inferno. I haven’t read Dante since high school but I remember some of the storyline.
Dante guides the narrator here as he goes through the motions of daily life. Birth, death, family, love, religion and politics are some of the themes encountered within these pages.

This second installment, based on Dante’s Purgatorio, takes the reader through Purgatory. It starts off with a husband in a hospital room while his wife is in labor. The narrator sees life and death in the hospital, like yin and yang. I have always found the idea of purgatory to be a fascinating and terrifying one. The thought of a soul being stuck midway like that, neither here nor there, in limbo.

The narrator is looking for his love Victoria and on reading the foreword, I found out the author based Victoria’s character on a girl he loved in real life who sadly, tragically passed away.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

–Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A favorite poem by Browning, and I think my favorite lines here are
“I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.”

There is something just sweet and to the point about this poem. I feel it showcases how loving someone is as necessary to life as breathing is.  “I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need”.  

What do you think?

Follow this link  to read more of her work. Sonnets from the Portuguese has been on my wishlist for a while now, I really should grab a copy for my shelves.

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disclaimer: The photo above is my own and is not available for download.