Poetic style and literary techniques

Poetic Style in Pablo Neruda "twenty love poems"

Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair was inspired by an unhappy love affair, which accounts for the poems expressing young, passionate, unhappy love perhaps better than any book of poetry in the Romantic tradition (Manuel E. Duran, Professor of Hispanic Literature, Yale University, Britannica Nobel Prizes web site).

The two poems, basis, which, this paper discusses the poetic style of Pablo Neruda, are "Tonight I Can Write" and " A Song of Despair." Both poems have several common themes, the most obvious being 'unhappiness over a lost love.' In "Tonight I Can Write," the theme is clearly expressed throughout the poem in lines such as: "Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms / my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her." (30-31)

The same tone of unhappiness over lost love comes through in " A Song of Despair": "Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost / I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you." (21-22) very visible and dominant element that occurs in both the above poems is that of 'nature' in all its various moods as an appropriate setting for passionate emotion, whether poignant or bitter. In fact, Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair begins with poems that are full of intensity, describing sensual passion and goes on to verses that are filled with melancholy reaching almost a crescendo of bitter emotions in the closing poem "A Song of Despair." It's almost as if the reader can follow the entire emotional experience of Pablo's love affair, starting with passion and desire, through a phase of doubt and confusion till the bitter end of loss and anger. The same change of mood is apparent even in the way in which Pablo used nature as a theme and a dominant element in his poetry. Take the opening lines in "Tonight I Can Write." Mother Nature sets the very tone and mood for the longing for a lost love that follows - a hint of coldness; a lonely shiver is implicit in the shivering stars and the night wind.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings"(1-4).

Similarly, the very opening of "A Song of Despair" signals the tone and mood of bitter anguish to come: "The memory of you emerges from the night around me.

The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea" (1-2)

While reading Pablo Neruda's poems, what strikes you with force is his highly unusual 'direct' style of writing that needs no interpretation or deeper analysis. The poet leaves you in no doubt whatsoever as to what he intends to communicate. One would ordinarily imagine that such a direct style of rendering verse would not leave any room for 'softness' and 'beauty.' Pablo Neruda would prove such obvious conclusions wrong for his poems are so intense that they leave a deep emotional impact on the reader. Here's a poet who can make you live his emotion and experience.

Using "Tonight I Can Write" and " A Song of Despair," as specific reference, I strongly feel that Pablo Neruda was definitely far more concerned with getting his message across and that poetic style was only used as a means to imbibe the message with the right degree and power of the emotion felt and that needed to be conveyed. This also accounts for the deliberate tone of vigor and passionate intensity that echoes in the way in which the lines are written and the short, almost terse nature of the breaks.