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Intimacies: Poems of Love
From Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda comes Intimacies—a beautiful companion to On the Blue Shore of Silence—showcasing some of Neruda's most extraordinary love poems, and once again married with Mary Heebner's earthy, evocative paintings.Neruda is celebrated the world over as a chronicler of love, and this vibrant addition to the revered master's canon offers readers a new interpretation on his writings about love and intimacy.
The poems in this collection remind us that love is woven through all life, and that amorous love is only but the tip of such a powerful emotion. This collection presents Neruda at the height of his powers, with some of the most vibrant verses of the twentieth century.
In a stunning package, with translations from acclaimed poet Alastair Reid, Intimacies is a book to be cherished and adored by both the most ardent Neruda fan and those new to the work of such an esteemed craftsman.
Del Premio Nobel Pablo Nerudallega Intimismos—un bellísimo compañero paraA la orilla azul del silencio—presentando algunosde los poemas de amor más extraordinarios de Neruda, unidos una vez más a las pinturas telúricas y evocativas de Mary Heebner.Neruda es celebrado por el mundo entero como el cronista del amor. Esta brillante adición al canon del venerado maestro les ofrece a sus lectores una nueva interpretación de sus escrituras sobre el amor y el papel que juega en nuestras vidas.
Los poemas de esta colección nos recuerdan que el amor se encuentra entretejido en toda la vida, y que el amor romántico no es más que una punta de tan poderosa emoción. Esta colección presenta a Neruda en la cúspide de su proeza, con algunos de los versos más vibrantes del siglo veinte.
Esta edición estelar de Intimismos, con traducciones por el aclamado poeta Alastair Reid, será apreciada y adorada tanto por los apasionados admiradores de Neruda como por aquellos que son nuevos a la obra de este honrado artesano.
- GenresPoetry
82 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2008
5 people are currently reading
141 people want to read
About the author
Pablo Neruda
1,082 books9,635 followersPablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in Parral, Chile, was a poet, diplomat, and politician, widely considered one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. From an early age, he showed a deep passion for poetry, publishing his first works as a teenager. He adopted the pen name Pablo Neruda to avoid disapproval from his father, who discouraged his literary ambitions. His breakthrough came with Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1924), a collection of deeply emotional and sensual poetry that gained international recognition and remains one of his most celebrated works.
Neruda’s career took him beyond literature into diplomacy, a path that allowed him to travel extensively and engage with political movements around the world. Beginning in 1927, he served in various consular posts in Asia and later in Spain, where he witnessed the Spanish Civil War and became an outspoken advocate for the Republican cause. His experiences led him to embrace communism, a commitment that would shape much of his later poetry and political activism. His collection España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts, 1937) reflected his deep sorrow over the war and marked a shift toward politically engaged writing.
Returning to Chile, he was elected to the Senate in 1945 as a member of the Communist Party. However, his vocal opposition to the repressive policies of President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla led to his exile. During this period, he traveled through various countries, including Argentina, Mexico, and the Soviet Union, further cementing his status as a global literary and political figure. It was during these years that he wrote Canto General (1950), an epic work chronicling Latin American history and the struggles of its people.
Neruda’s return to Chile in 1952 marked a new phase in his life, balancing political activity with a prolific literary output. He remained a staunch supporter of socialist ideals and later developed a close relationship with Salvador Allende, who appointed him as Chile’s ambassador to France in 1970. The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized for the scope and impact of his poetry. His later years were marked by illness, and he died in 1973, just days after the military coup that overthrew Allende. His legacy endures, not only in his vast body of work but also in his influence on literature, political thought, and the cultural identity of Latin America.
Neruda’s career took him beyond literature into diplomacy, a path that allowed him to travel extensively and engage with political movements around the world. Beginning in 1927, he served in various consular posts in Asia and later in Spain, where he witnessed the Spanish Civil War and became an outspoken advocate for the Republican cause. His experiences led him to embrace communism, a commitment that would shape much of his later poetry and political activism. His collection España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts, 1937) reflected his deep sorrow over the war and marked a shift toward politically engaged writing.
Returning to Chile, he was elected to the Senate in 1945 as a member of the Communist Party. However, his vocal opposition to the repressive policies of President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla led to his exile. During this period, he traveled through various countries, including Argentina, Mexico, and the Soviet Union, further cementing his status as a global literary and political figure. It was during these years that he wrote Canto General (1950), an epic work chronicling Latin American history and the struggles of its people.
Neruda’s return to Chile in 1952 marked a new phase in his life, balancing political activity with a prolific literary output. He remained a staunch supporter of socialist ideals and later developed a close relationship with Salvador Allende, who appointed him as Chile’s ambassador to France in 1970. The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized for the scope and impact of his poetry. His later years were marked by illness, and he died in 1973, just days after the military coup that overthrew Allende. His legacy endures, not only in his vast body of work but also in his influence on literature, political thought, and the cultural identity of Latin America.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 29, 2020
It could be true that once again it has dawned
like an aroma, like dread, like a stranger
who is not sure of the street or the house.
It could be true, this late, and even later,
that life is splitting open,
something takes life in the depths of what was ash,
and the glass trembles with new wine,
which falls and sets it on fire. Oh, that could be
the same as it was, a way without signposts,
and the stars burning with the freshness
of jasmines between you and the night—
something that restores joy,
brutally rejected,
and that declares, with no one to overhear,
that it will not wear out. A flag goes up
once again on the burned towers.
Love, love, sudden and threatening,
quick, confused—memory
shivers, and the silver ship
arrives,
the early-morning landing.
Snow and foam cover the banks,
a vast cry goes out toward the islands,
and through the wounded doorway to the ocean
comes my love, trailing lilies,
ready to depart. Look at her hair—
twin tumblings of pure coal,
black wings of swallows,
two heavy wreaths of triumph.
And she, as in the ceremony of betrothal,
waits, crowned by the sea,
in the imaginary harbor.
like an aroma, like dread, like a stranger
who is not sure of the street or the house.
It could be true, this late, and even later,
that life is splitting open,
something takes life in the depths of what was ash,
and the glass trembles with new wine,
which falls and sets it on fire. Oh, that could be
the same as it was, a way without signposts,
and the stars burning with the freshness
of jasmines between you and the night—
something that restores joy,
brutally rejected,
and that declares, with no one to overhear,
that it will not wear out. A flag goes up
once again on the burned towers.
Love, love, sudden and threatening,
quick, confused—memory
shivers, and the silver ship
arrives,
the early-morning landing.
Snow and foam cover the banks,
a vast cry goes out toward the islands,
and through the wounded doorway to the ocean
comes my love, trailing lilies,
ready to depart. Look at her hair—
twin tumblings of pure coal,
black wings of swallows,
two heavy wreaths of triumph.
And she, as in the ceremony of betrothal,
waits, crowned by the sea,
in the imaginary harbor.
November 5, 2014
Who doesn't want to be loved like Neruda loved? Who doesn't want to feel the love that he felt in his lifetime for women, family, his country, his landscape of ocean and mountain? He is a complex poet, and can uses love and landscape to chart a course through life, and I absorb more and more every time I read him. The paintings accompanying the poems are gorgeous, and as many of the poems mention autumn, the muted browns, peaches, pinks wrap around your senses and complement the poems perfectly.
Little gems and my 2 favorites; October Fullness might be one of my most favorite poems ever...
my heart has traveled/in the same pair of shoes/ and i have survived the thorns. (Where can Guillermina be?)
passing loves, quick/and thirsty, a fitting of keys,/and that flush of something shared!/i think now that my poetry began/not in solitude but in a body,/another's body, in a skin of moonlight,/in the abundant kisses of the earth. (loves: the city)
poetry is pure white./it emerges from water covered with drops,/is wrinkled, all in a heap./it has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,/has to be ironed out, the whiteness from the sea;/and the hands keep moving, moving,/ the holy surfaces are smoothed out. (in praise of ironing)
i prefer poems stained by hands and everydayness. (sweetness, always)
from so much loving and journeying, books emerge./And if they don't contain kisses and landscapes,/if they don't contain a man with his hands full,/if they don't contain a woman in every drop,/hunger, desire, anger, roads,/they are no use as a shield or a bell:/they have no eyes, and won't be able to open them,/they have the dead sound of precepts. (Ars magnetica)
DAZZLE OF DAY
Enough now of the wet eyes of winter.
Not one single tear.
Hour by hour, green is beginning,
the essential season, leaf by leaf,
until, by spring’s name, we are summoned
to take part in its joy.
How wonderful, its eternal openness,
clean air, the promise of flower,
the full moon leaving
its calling card in the foliage,
men and women trailing from the beach
with a wet basket of shifting silver.
Like love, like a medal,
I welcome it,
I take it all in,
from south, from north, from violins,
from dogs,
lemons, clay,
from newly liberated air,
machines smelling of mystery,
storm-colored shopping,
everything I need:
orange blossoms, string,
grapes like topazes,
the whiff of waves.
I gather it up
endlessly,
effortlessly,
I breathe.
I dry my shirt in the wind,
and my opened heart.
The sky falls
and falls.
From my glass,
I drink
pure joy.
OCTOBER FULLNESS
Little by little, and also in great leaps,
life happened to me,
and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried
my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places
without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The best thing was learning not to have too much
either of sorrow or of joy,
to hope for the chance of a last drop,
to ask more from honey and from twilight.
Perhaps it was my punishment.
Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.
Let it be known that nobody
crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck
into adversities that were not mine,
into all the sufferings of others.
It wasn’t a question of applause or profit.
Much less. It was not being able
to live or breathe in this shadow,
the shadow of others like towers,
like bitter trees that bury you,
like cobblestones on the knees.
Our own wounds heal with weeping,
our own wounds heal with singing,
but in our own doorway lie bleeding
widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen.
The miner’s child doesn’t know his father
amidst all that suffering.
So be it, but my business was
the fullness of the spirit:
a cry of pleasure choking you,
a sigh from an uprooted plant,
the sum of all action.
It pleased me to grow with the morning,
to bathe in the sun, in the great joy
of sun, salt, sea-light and wave,
and in that unwinding of the foam
my heart began to move,
growing in that essential spasm,
and dying away as it seeped into the sand.
Little gems and my 2 favorites; October Fullness might be one of my most favorite poems ever...
my heart has traveled/in the same pair of shoes/ and i have survived the thorns. (Where can Guillermina be?)
passing loves, quick/and thirsty, a fitting of keys,/and that flush of something shared!/i think now that my poetry began/not in solitude but in a body,/another's body, in a skin of moonlight,/in the abundant kisses of the earth. (loves: the city)
poetry is pure white./it emerges from water covered with drops,/is wrinkled, all in a heap./it has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,/has to be ironed out, the whiteness from the sea;/and the hands keep moving, moving,/ the holy surfaces are smoothed out. (in praise of ironing)
i prefer poems stained by hands and everydayness. (sweetness, always)
from so much loving and journeying, books emerge./And if they don't contain kisses and landscapes,/if they don't contain a man with his hands full,/if they don't contain a woman in every drop,/hunger, desire, anger, roads,/they are no use as a shield or a bell:/they have no eyes, and won't be able to open them,/they have the dead sound of precepts. (Ars magnetica)
DAZZLE OF DAY
Enough now of the wet eyes of winter.
Not one single tear.
Hour by hour, green is beginning,
the essential season, leaf by leaf,
until, by spring’s name, we are summoned
to take part in its joy.
How wonderful, its eternal openness,
clean air, the promise of flower,
the full moon leaving
its calling card in the foliage,
men and women trailing from the beach
with a wet basket of shifting silver.
Like love, like a medal,
I welcome it,
I take it all in,
from south, from north, from violins,
from dogs,
lemons, clay,
from newly liberated air,
machines smelling of mystery,
storm-colored shopping,
everything I need:
orange blossoms, string,
grapes like topazes,
the whiff of waves.
I gather it up
endlessly,
effortlessly,
I breathe.
I dry my shirt in the wind,
and my opened heart.
The sky falls
and falls.
From my glass,
I drink
pure joy.
OCTOBER FULLNESS
Little by little, and also in great leaps,
life happened to me,
and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried
my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places
without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The best thing was learning not to have too much
either of sorrow or of joy,
to hope for the chance of a last drop,
to ask more from honey and from twilight.
Perhaps it was my punishment.
Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.
Let it be known that nobody
crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck
into adversities that were not mine,
into all the sufferings of others.
It wasn’t a question of applause or profit.
Much less. It was not being able
to live or breathe in this shadow,
the shadow of others like towers,
like bitter trees that bury you,
like cobblestones on the knees.
Our own wounds heal with weeping,
our own wounds heal with singing,
but in our own doorway lie bleeding
widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen.
The miner’s child doesn’t know his father
amidst all that suffering.
So be it, but my business was
the fullness of the spirit:
a cry of pleasure choking you,
a sigh from an uprooted plant,
the sum of all action.
It pleased me to grow with the morning,
to bathe in the sun, in the great joy
of sun, salt, sea-light and wave,
and in that unwinding of the foam
my heart began to move,
growing in that essential spasm,
and dying away as it seeped into the sand.
May 27, 2017
Pablo Neruda is amongst one of my very favorite poets and I am pleased to share this book with you during this month of love. There's something magical about the way he strings words together, and for me, this collection- which includes some of his later poems-goes to the core of what Neruda is all about.
This work is a reminder of the importance of love in all aspects of our lives. Neruda's poetry reflects his passion for life coupled with all its joys, sorrows, obstacles, manifestations and transformations. His poetry chronicles the expansiveness of the lived experience in the most poetic way.
One of the many special treats of reading Neruda's book is that on the right side of each page spread one of his poems is English and the left side there is the poems in his original Spanish. I am inspired to learn Spanish so I can read his poems in their original language
Neruda's poetry captures the essence of love. It's difficult for me to choose my favorite poem, as they all have something to offer, but in honor of Valentine's Day, I share with you a segment of his poem, "Love." Of everything I have seen/it's you I want to go on seeing;/of everything I 've touched,/it's your fleet I want to go on touching. /I love your orange laughter./I am moved by the sight of your sleeping.
The abstract paintings by California artist, Mary Heebner further accentuate the beauty and power of Neruda's poetry, making this a wonderful gift for your beloved one and/or a beautiful addition to your coffee table.
This work is a reminder of the importance of love in all aspects of our lives. Neruda's poetry reflects his passion for life coupled with all its joys, sorrows, obstacles, manifestations and transformations. His poetry chronicles the expansiveness of the lived experience in the most poetic way.
One of the many special treats of reading Neruda's book is that on the right side of each page spread one of his poems is English and the left side there is the poems in his original Spanish. I am inspired to learn Spanish so I can read his poems in their original language
Neruda's poetry captures the essence of love. It's difficult for me to choose my favorite poem, as they all have something to offer, but in honor of Valentine's Day, I share with you a segment of his poem, "Love." Of everything I have seen/it's you I want to go on seeing;/of everything I 've touched,/it's your fleet I want to go on touching. /I love your orange laughter./I am moved by the sight of your sleeping.
The abstract paintings by California artist, Mary Heebner further accentuate the beauty and power of Neruda's poetry, making this a wonderful gift for your beloved one and/or a beautiful addition to your coffee table.
Read
July 10, 2022Why such harsh machinery?
Why, to write down the happenings
and people of every day,
must poems be dressed up in gold,
in old and grim stone?
I prefer verses of felt or feather
which scarcely weigh, soft verses
with the intimacy of beds
where people have loved and dreamed.
I prefer poems stained
by hands and everydayness.
Why, to write down the happenings
and people of every day,
must poems be dressed up in gold,
in old and grim stone?
I prefer verses of felt or feather
which scarcely weigh, soft verses
with the intimacy of beds
where people have loved and dreamed.
I prefer poems stained
by hands and everydayness.
July 7, 2023
Rereading this book which was a gift. I love Neruda’s poetry.
November 6, 2023
Between 3 and 4. Some beautiful lines (of course). Some beautiful artwork, although I didn't really like the wrinkled texture on some of them.
September 2, 2024
Wonderful, masterfully concise writing.
From - I Ask for Silence
“That, friends, is all I want.
next to nothing, close to everything”
Sums up Pablo Neruda’s poetry, in a couple lines.
From - I Ask for Silence
“That, friends, is all I want.
next to nothing, close to everything”
Sums up Pablo Neruda’s poetry, in a couple lines.
May 23, 2024
Pablo Neruda es el rey de los poemas del amor!!! Cada vez que leo sus poemas, pienso “¿cómo una persona puede poner estos sentimientos en palabras?!?” Prefiero “Cien sonetos de amor” de Neruda, pero tmb me gustó mucho esta colección. Estoy aprendiendo el español y me gusta aprender palabras nuevas por su libros/poemas.
May 18, 2014
This really is a beautiful presentation of Neruda's poems, not that they need any help. Yet, it is quite fitting to place them in a book with beautiful images that blend so well with his words. This book feels very full, even though there are only 15 poems. Each poem is presented side-by-side with the Spanish and English versions. Between each poem there is an image by Mary Heebner. These are lovely paintings that fit well with the themes of Neruda's poetry. Even if one has read these poems before, it is worth reading them again in this setting.
June 3, 2015
A gorgeous bilingual edition, with stunning illustrations, quality printing, and excellent design. Some of Neruda's most personal and gloriously vulnerable pieces that illuminate the essence of his joy.
January 2, 2009
Really quite beautiful
January 30, 2009
In a word...lovely. And the beautiful artwork that accompanies each poem is a wonderful addition.
February 9, 2010
The man is a true poet.
October 15, 2014
I bought this for a close friend and wanted to keep it for myself. There is something about the paintings that lend themselves to the poems, and the poems are very well selected. Beautiful book.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews