Pablo Neruda

This FlyHunnie loves poetry and first encountered Pablo Neruda in eighth grade.

I was sleeping over at a friend's house and her older brother had left his junior English book out, and being my nerdy self, I decided to read it when said friend fell asleep before me.

And what lay within? 

A whole BUNCH of great poetry.

The first poem I read was "Ode to My Socks," and I was struck. Anyone who could write like that

- about socks of all things -

had me on their team. I continued on in my search for Neruda and stumbled upon "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair."

(Holy mackerel, did I hide that from my mother. 

An eighth grade girl's first encounter with passion and sensuality is a very memorable thing, let me tell you.)

I will also always be thankful to finding Robert Bly's translations of Neruda because they led me to Bly's own poetry, another staple of the Brigid poetry arsenal.

And the thing is, they are still as fully moving and heart-breaking and pit-in-my-stomach-inducing as they were in the days before I had even been kissed.

Being fourteen and fascinated with the idea of love, I devoured those songs and odes and sonnets

like I could never be satisfied.

I'm still not satisfied. I could eat those words for the rest of my life and not be finished until ink is running down my chin.

Universality. Pablo Neruda graffiti:

These are poems I can read forever and only hope to someday understand.

I wonder sometimes if it is possible for mere people like myself, no poet, to feel things so beautiful and so deep.

Hopefully someday, I can let you know.

Some Neruda for you.

Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer

Warning:
This post contains a photograph of female sudoriferous glands.
Avert your eyes lest the boobs cause impure thoughts!

Dear Henry Miller,
You are a raunchy old man and I love you for that.
XOXO,
Danielle
PS - Call me


I really don't know how to give this book the due it deserves.
To give you a sense of my appreciation for it: Quotes from Tropic of Cancer take up four pages of my book quote notebook. Quote-book?

In short, Tropic of Cancer is a novel about finding a way for life and decadence to thrive in the most dire of situations. Miller exposes the savage nature of mankind through a series of semi-autobiographical accounts of people (namely "working ladies") he encounters while living in a grim and filthy 1930s France. Sex and squalor, basically.

Some have called Miller a misogynistic bastard for depicting women as sexual objects and many have argued for the ban of the book because of its X(XX)-rated accounts of certain rendezvous. Those people should really stick to reading Twilight.
And now for quotes although I highly, highly recommend you read this novel novel.

"Passed me men and women ignited with sulfur, porters in calcium livery opening the jaws of hell, fame walking on crutches, dwindled by the sky-scrapers, chewed to a frazzle by the spiked mouth of the machines."

"We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh."

"Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy."

And, how could I forget:
"A laboratory cunt and no litmus paper that could take her color."