Pablo Neruda's Words

Cordillera, Canto, Colibri, and Corolla

It’s Poetry Month, a perfect time to scour the lines of your favorite poets for some incredible words. Today’s Words of Wonder come from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. His book SELECTED ODES OF PABLO NERUDA, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, is a fixture on my nightstand. I try to end each day with some poetic lines of praise.

Cordillera

In our modern age it’s easy to become complacent. A few times on an airplane, and we forget to marvel at the view that only a fraction of humanity has seen. Flying over the Rocky Mountains, I’m in awe of their sheer scale and grandeur. Pablo Neruda must have had a similar thrill flying above the Andes.

From Ode to the Andean Cordillera
By Pablo Neruda
Translated from Spanish by Ilan Stavans

Once again, from up high,
flying over 
the sky,
you appeared, white and obscure 
cordillera of my homeland.
Before then, the great airplane 
crossed great seas,
jungles, deserts.
Everything was symmetry,
everything was ready
on the earth’s surface,
everything from above
was path,
until, in the middle 
of heaven and earth,
your planetary snow
lodged itself,
freezing the towers of earth.

Canto

Canto comes from the Italian word for “song” and is used to describe a section of a long poem: for instance, Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY is divided into 100 cantos.

I love Pablo Neruda’s odes to common things: a pair of socks, a tuna in the market, a village movie theater, the humble onion. All are worthy of praise, all are worthy of poetry. They make me want to create a book of poetry comics odes. Ode to a driveway basketball hoop. Ode to the traffic light. Ode to a box of cereal. What would you write an ode about?

From Ode to the Onion
By Pablo Neruda
Translated from Spanish by Stephen Mitchell

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

Colibri

This is a word that sounds like what it means: quick, light, colorful, blink and you’ll miss it. Last summer I watched a hummingbird hover around a pink hibiscus flower in my backyard. After a few minutes of awe, I realized I wasn’t seeing a hummingbird at all—it was a no-less-awesome hummingbird moth.

From Ode to the Hummingbird 
By Pablo Neruda
Translated from Spanish by Maria Jacketti

The hummingbird
in flight
is a water-spark,
an incandescent drop
of American
fire,
the jungle's
flaming résumé,
a heavenly,
precise
rainbow:
the hummingbird is
an arc,
a golden
thread,
a green
bonfire!

Corolla

The literal meaning of corolla is “little crown,” related to the petals of a flower. It’s the diminutive form of the word corona. Both are wonderful words, both are (possibly less wonderful) Toyota car models.

Bee watching is second only to hummingbird watching in lazy afternoon activities. Like poets, bees work best under conditions of beauty.

From Ode to the Bee
By Pablo Neruda
Translated from Spanish by Wally Swist

Multitude of bees!
They go in and out
of crimson, of blue,
of yellow,
of the softest
softness in the world:
you enter
headlong
into a corolla,
you go out
for business
in a gold suit
and a quantity
of yellow boots.

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Photo by Katy @katys_book_shelf

My new book POETRY COMICS features an ode to a new pair of shoes, an address to a snail, an elegy for a fallen oak, and a lament for a lost bicycle. You can purchase it worldwide wherever you get your books; signed copies are at my local independent bookstore, Watermark Books & Cafe.

I love hearing how POETRY COMICS is being used in the classroom to inspire the next generation of artists. Thanks to Poetry Paige (Paige Bentley-Flannery) of Deschutes Public Library for sending the photos below. Kindergarten and 1st grade students acted out the “Shape Story” poetry comic, and 5th graders created their own “Cloudspotting” poem.

“Every year it’s a new theme. This year it’s all about Nature. I really appreciate and love your new book Poetry Comics. It’s fabulous!

Thank you for creating an amazing new way to explore poetry. We yelled out words, looked at our reflection, selected our own animals to watch grow, looked up and all around and remembered to pause.”

Thank you, Paige, for the message!