Pablo Neruda\'s \"Ode to Wine\"

Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Wine" is a poem about, well, as the title would suggest, wine.

The speaker of the poem starts by describing the different colors and characteristics of wine, "day-colored wine, / night-colored wine" the "lascivious" velvety nature of wine and then begins to delve into the more elusive but omnipresent qualities of wine, "never has one goblet contained you… you must be shared." Then, the speaker goes on to describe how wine has the capacity to incite and accompany seasonal change, "Wine / stirs the spring, happiness / bursts through the earth like a plant." The speaker ends the first stanza of the poem by sharing the unique effect wine has on love, "Let the wine pitcher / add to the kiss of love its own."

In the second stanza the speaker introduces a woman, a lover (is this the wine itself?). And this lover begins to remind the speaker of wine, "your breast is the grape cluster / your nipples are the grapes." This marks an interesting turnaround as in the previous stanza wine was being personified, or being rendered in terms of human characteristics. However, in the second stanza, this changes as the woman is being described in terms of wine. What ties the two stanzas together, in addition to this inversion of terms used to describe two different subjects (wine and women), is the connection to love, "your love an inexhaustible / cascade of wine, / light that illuminates my senses, / the earthly splendor of life." Here the speaker seems to be suggesting that wine not only has a unique imprint on love (vis a vis the first stanza), but love is also ameliorated by wine. In other words, there is a symbiotic and reciprocal relationship between wine and love.

In the third stanza, the speaker qualifies his comparison, "But you are more than love," the speaker says of the woman (here it would appear the speaker is also referring to wine as if the two subjects have blended into one). The speaker then explains how he values the communal aspect that wine encourages, speaking and discussing and conversing with a bottle of wine presiding over the dialogue, "I like on the table, / when we're speaking, / the light of a bottle / of intelligent wine." The last stanza of the poem ends with lines that circle back to some of the imagery and themes used in the first few lines in the first stanza, for example, the gold, the topaz, the purple color, autumn (seasonal) and the choral/canticle qualities of wine

To answer the question why I like this poem, it would have to be because I don't quite understand it. I'm drawn to poems that are discursive and difficult to comprehend (I'm a big fan of John Ashbery). I must have read it thirty times and I still have yet to agree on how each line, each word is connected. It's a challenging poem in this regard, and I like a challenge.

I have a personal connection to the poem because, quite simply, I like wine. Now, I don't know if I agree with the Speaker regarding wine's eternal (can never be contained in one glass) and critically important qualities (the community of man), but I do like a fine wine every now and again.

Lastly, as for two poetic elements, I would argue that what makes this poem memorable is its structure and its metaphors (as previously mentioned, comparing women to wine and wine to women).

The structure of the poem is like a purling stream of wine flowing from a bottle. That is to say, the poem seems to flow at different intensities, almost as if someone was pouring it out of a bottle. There's an arrhythmic tempo to it that is quite appealing. Some one, two word lines followed by some five, six, seven word lines. This carefully wrought structure underpins the subject, wine, quite nicely.