1. Pablo Neruda’s poetry as “An exploration of being”: the erotic vs. nature poet

2. Background Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto 1904 – 1973 Early Life: Training and education Literary Influences Government posts and later poetry Neruda’s later life Awards

3. The Erotic Poet Passion and intensity– overcome later by melancholy, regret and sadness “I no longer love her, that’s for certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses. Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes. I am no longer in love with her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” -Poem 20

4. Use of everyday language and images “Between the lips and the voice something goes on dying. Something with the wings of a bird, something made of anguish and oblivion. The way nets cannot hold water.” -Poem 13

5. Exploration of a woman’s body “ But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you. Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk. Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence! Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!” -Body of a Woman

6. Disturbing Images “I have slowly marked the atlas of your body with crosses of fire. My mouth was a spider that explored, trying to hide. In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst. “ -Poem 13

7. Equating a woman’s body, her mind, mood with some aspect of the natural world “ Nimble and bronze-skinned girl, the sun that makes fruits grow, the sun that swells the wheat, the sun that plaits the sea-weed, this sun has built your merry body, your luminous eyes, your mouth that curve’s with the water’s smile.” -Poem 13

8. Erotic Image drawn from nature “You have deep eyes where night flails. Cool flower-arms and a lap of rose. “ -Poem 8 “Nothing is more material than the love of Twenty Poems, nothing closer to vegetative, germinative, animal nature, a nature onto which the poet is entwined like a vine, planted like wheat or a pine tree” - Monguio

9. Describing Nature as it is “The gnashing teeth of the sea bite the open pulp of the shore where the green water breaks like star dust against the silent earth.” - Southern Beach The Nature Poet

10. “…the turtle came to a half remained here asleep and is not aware of it. she was so old she hardened, she forgot about the sea and its waves and became rigid like a flatiron and then fell asleep, a boulder among other boulders” - Stones of Chile, The Turtle

11. The Horrific world of chaos, destruction, decomposition” “Pale bonfires twisting at the edge of nights Dead clouds of smoke invisible dust whisked away” -The Venture

12. Exhaustion from the Urban Landscape “ There are sulphurous birds and a horror of hanging tripes nailed to the doors of the houses I loathe There are dental plates lost in a coffee pot, there are mirrors that should have wept with the shame and horror of it all; And everywhere, umbrellas, poisons, and belly buttons.” -Walking around

13. “All I ask is a little vacation from things, from boulders or woolens, from gardens, institutions, merchandise… It so happens I’m fed up with my feet and my fingernails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I’m tired of being a man.” - Walking Around

14. The Human Body is not Free “Always Man-made things, stockings, and shoes, Or simply the infinite air: Between my feet and the earth, Exacerbating my solitude, my exile, Something tenacious separates me from the earth” - Residence I, Ritual of my Legs

15. A Return to Material Sustenance “River of life, essential strands, Green branches, sunlight caressed, …you grow inside me, you let me know All about dark light and the earth’s rose. “ - Hymn to Celery, Residence II “What do you want, you visitor with the flimsy corset?”

16. Nothing that exists in the external world is worthless “…luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew.” -Elemental Odes “an interrogating innocence dressed in night and in snow” -The Art of Birds

17. “I am made out of clothes, arthritis, torn papers, forgotten quotations poor traces and signs on the walls of what were once proud stories.” - Another Castle

18. Works Cited Durán, Manuel and Margery Safir. Earth tones : the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1981. Neruda, Pablo. Pablo Neruda : five decades, a selection (poems 1925-1970). New York : Grove Press, 1974.