Fleas interest me so much
that I let them bite me for hours.
Music
He who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly.
Movies
"Pablo Neruda: The poet's calling."
During his lifetime, Pablo Neruda became the world's most famous poet - a giant of a man who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, counted Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera as close friends and was so politically active that he became a senator in his native Chile. Yet what emerges as much as anything in Mark Eisner's fine documentary about him, is Neruda's ability to connect with everyday people - not just in the superficial style of a glad-handing politician but in ways that were so genuine and lasting that the people he touched remember him, decades later, with love in their eyes.
Neruda’s works are ripe with the images of red poppies, sand, rain, wooden tools, silver stones, horses’ breath, the rugged hands of copper miners, a woman’s “genital fire transformed into delight.” His subjects ranged from politics to the sea, from indigenous Chileans to Richard Nixon.
He was a compassionate poet of the people. “I have always wanted the hands of the people to be seen in poetry,” he wrote. “I have always preferred a poetry where the fingerprints show, of loam, where water can sing. A poetry of bread, where everyone may eat.”
Neruda was asked, “Why did you want to write?”
He answered, “I wanted to be a voice.”
We interview his surviving best friends, scholars, poets, construction workers, and Rafita, his carpenter who built Neruda's fabled coastal home Isla Negra, as well as his house in Valparaiso.
Legendary singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega narrates our documentary. She is a huge Neruda lover. We hope you are or will become one too.
(THIS FILM IS STILL UNFINISHED AND NEEDS FUNDING. FOR MORE DETAILS PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW)
www.redpoppy.net
Television
Classic Simpsons quote... Lisa: Pablo Neruda says "laughter is the language of the soul."
Bart: I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.
Books
When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.
The ocean's surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio--
I got a telegram
from the "Mine" Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won't let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.
No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won't go clothed
in volumes,
I don't come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems--
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I'm on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I'm going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.
Heroes
All the books I read
are full of dazzling heroes,
always sure of themselves.
I die with envy of them;
and in films full of wind and bullets,
I goggle at the cowboys,
I even admire the horses.
But when I call for a hero,
out comes my lazy old self;
so I never know who I am,
nor how many I am or will be.
I'd love to be able to touch a bell
and summon the real me,
because if I really need myself,
I mustn't disappear.
Pablo Neruda's Details
Status:
Married
Zodiac Sign:
Cancer
Occupation:
Poet
Pablo Neruda is in your extended network view more
About me: I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.
Who I'd like to meet: It’s good to feel you are close to me in the night, love,
invisible in your sleep, intently nocturnal,
while I untangle my worries
as if they were twisted nets.
Withdrawn, your heart sails through dream,
but your body, relinquished so, breathes
seeking me without seeing me perfecting my dream
like a plant that seeds itself in the dark.
Rising, you will be that other, alive in the dawn,
but from the frontiers lost in the night,
from the presence and the absence where we meet ourselves,
something remains, drawing us into the light of life
as if the sign of the shadows had sealed
its secret creatures with flame.
Beautiful film with words to Morning (Love sonnet XXVII) in Italian...
C is for the Child born that night to be our light. (John 8:12)
H is for holy is His name. (Rev.4:8) R is for rejoice with gladness & joy. (Luke 1:14) I is for Immanuel, God with us. (Is.7:14,) John 1:14) S is for the star that led the Wise men to Him. (Matt.2:2) T is for the truth & grace that was sent our way. (John 1:14) M is for Mother Mary laying Him in swaddling clothes in the
manger. (Luke 2:7) A is for angels singing songs of joy. (Luke 2:14) S is for salvation.
This holiday is especially wonderful because it sets aside a day to be with people we love and to reflect upon and share our many blessings and our gratitude.Have a wonderful day hugs Summer
After you've finished here, you may like to hear this folk-carol on myspace... Poem 230 of 230, WalkaboutsVerse (see my blog for details): CHRISTMAS SUNG SIMPLY
As gospellers have said, Beneath signalling skies, On land dusty to tread, A trough in a stable Was the strawy first-bed Of a divine baby - The forgiving Godhead.
A season for new hope - There then and here now; The yuletide of goodwill - There then and here now.
In respect of this chance, Beneath bright or dark skies, Faith's the star that we glance Attending Christ's churches And trying to enhance, With singing and ritual, Our God-loving stance.
On the beach at night alone As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
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