Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda

by Pablo Neruda Narrated by Stephen Mitchell

Overview

Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon offers fresh interpretations of the most widely read and loved poet of the 20th century- translated and read by a master of poetic expressiveness. Out of the great profusion of Neruda's poetry, Stephen Mitchell has selected forty-nine poems and brought them to life for a new generation of listeners. These are poems of a happy man, deeply fulfilled in his sexuality, at home in the world, in love with life and its infinite particular forms, and overflowing with the joy of language. These large-hearted, generous poems resonant with a humor that is rare in poetry.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Stephen Mitchell’s translation gives us a glimpse inside Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s life—a life that sees the profound in the ordinary. . . . In these ordinary moments, we find ourselves pondering the profound.” — Christian Science Monitor

“The Nobel laureate’s work is refreshingly accessible and unpretentious. He celebrates the joy and wonder of the ordinary and conveys it with confident, playful language. . . . [Mitchell’s] love for this material is clear.” — Seattle Times

Christian Science Monitor

Stephen Mitchell’s translation gives us a glimpse inside Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s life—a life that sees the profound in the ordinary. . . . In these ordinary moments, we find ourselves pondering the profound.

Seattle Times

The Nobel laureate’s work is refreshingly accessible and unpretentious. He celebrates the joy and wonder of the ordinary and conveys it with confident, playful language. . . . [Mitchell’s] love for this material is clear.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178322567
Publisher:	Phoenix Books, Inc.
Publication date:	05/08/2001
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Some Beasts

It was the twilight of the iguana.

From the rainbow-arched battlements
his tongue like a dart
plunged into the greenness,
the monastic ant-swarm walked
through the jungle with melodious feet,
the guanaco, thin as oxygen
in the wide gray heights,
moved wearing boots of gold,
while the llama opened his guileless
eyes in the transparency
of a world filled with dew.
The monkeys braided a thread
endlessly erotic
along the shores of the dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and scaring off the violet flight
of the butterflies of Muzo.
It was the night of the alligators,
the night pure and pullulating
with snouts emerging from the slime,
and out of the sleepy marshes
an opaque noise of armor
returned to the earth it came from.

The jaguar touched the leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma runs on the branches
like a devouring fire
while inside him burn
the jungle's alcoholic eyes.

The badgers scratch the feet
of the river, sniff out the nest
whose throbbing delight
they'll attack with red teeth.

And in the depths of the all-powerful water,
like the circle of the earth,
lies the giant anaconda,
covered with ritual mud,
devouring and religious.

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