Book Review # 2

Hey everyone, I hope you had a wonderful spring break. I went to Florida and got some sun, but I soon found myself back on Long Island getting ready to go back to school. To release some of my nerves upon my return to school I decided to hang out with my little cousin whose in fourth grade. I thought it would be fun to go to the mall for a little because we both love to shop. After we went to a couple of her stores, I dragged her in to Anthropology. I rummaged through the sale and was ready to leave, when suddenly the home section caught my eye. Anthropology always has really cute, vintage gizmo's, so we stopped one more time on our way out to take a look at some of the things. As soon as we looked at the bedding, I noticed the store had added a bunch of fun books to a bunch of corner bookshelves. Most of the books were for children or could have been great coffee table decor, but were intricate pop-up books. I have a bunch of them at my house from over the years, so we looked at some new ones. I was so intrigued by the book section when suddenly I saw a wide variety of poetry books. Some of them were made to look dusty and old, some were full of pop culture images, and some of them were very delicate, yet it was the most simplistic one that grabbed our attention. We sat, and looked at the poems and I pointed out some unique techniques the poet, Pablo Neruda, uses throughout his romantic poems. I liked the book because it was made of poems that were written in Spanish and because my cousin and I found it to be fun for us to read together. (Definitely not for it's plain pink cover and melancholy feeling we got from the cover.)
My cousin found it interesting because both her and I speak a quite a bit of Spanish. When we tried to translate the first poem, we gave up within the first five minutes. I like the set up of this book of poems because it had the same poem on the opposite page, translated word for word. All the poems were Romantic and easy for me to understand. I was able to explain the difficult images and meaning to my 9 year old cousin when it was hard for her to understand. I enjoyed the drastic changes in images that came to mind from poem to poem. All of them discussed love which can be very boring sometimes, but what made this book interesting was the nifty idea when it came to the set up.
When there was two poems that we considered sonnets I started to teach my cousin to count syllables and show her what make a sonnet a sonnet. The translations didn't match up to the fourteen line, iambic pentameter techniques that are found in sonnets, so I figure it was just because the poems were not meant to be written in English. Lauren and I decided to try and count the syllables from the Spanish poems written in fourteen lines, but when we mispronounced words and jumbled the flow of the Spanish sonnets, it didn't sound so pretty.
When we were having trouble and we realized that we had been sitting in corner of the store for almost an hour, we decided to buy the book, titled Love Poems by Pablo Neruda. We figured we could have my housekeeper, Aida, read us the poems aloud so we could see if Neruda follows the rules of a sonnet. We knew the poet didn't follow the rules of a sonnet when two of the three poems translated in English were not in iambic pentameter. As soon as we got to my house we asked Aida to read us the sonnets. We both forgot to count the beats to check for Iambic pentameter because the sound of the words and the flow sounded romantic even when we didn't know what the poem was talking about. When we asked her to read aloud a couple more times, I realized Neruda did follow the rules of a sonnet.
My housekeeper continued to ask what the purpose was of her reading these poems aloud. I told her where and how we had found the book of poems and when she found it flattering how interested Lauren and I were, she continued to tell us some details about writing when it come to writing Spanish poems or songs. She told us that when it comes to choosing a word, a lot of the times it doesn't have to fit in perfectly in order to make sense, most of the time it is the sound and the flow of the rhythm that make a song or poem romantic, funny, or sad.
Once I realized that I had to write a book review and that I found this book before I thought about the assignment, I went back to this book of poems and looked at all the imagery that is in the English translated poems. I found most of the images and meanings to be scary, lonely and unusual. This is when I noticed what my housekeeper was saying was true. I found this to be very interesting because I appreciate Neruda's poems when they are read aloud and not when I learn the real meaning and images that are portrayed in the English Translation. I almost wish I didn't read too much into the meanings. The current feeling I have towards some images like,

"Night crossing: Black coal of dream

that cuts the thread of earthly orbs

with the punctuality of a headlong train

that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly,"

make me wonder how could people like Aida get beyond the images that are created by the words and just hear the beautiful sound the words create?