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Neruda's Garden: An Anthology of Odes (Discoveries (Latin American Literary Review Pr))

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Anthology of Odes
A joy of odes
Full of Typos!

Neruda's Garden: An Anthology of Odes (Discoveries (Latin American Literary Review Pr))
Pablo Neruda
Manufacturer: Latin American Literary Review Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Chile, selected & tr Maria Jacketti

Customer Reviews:

Anthology of Odes.......2002-05-02

Translating poetry is one of the hardest things I've ever seen done but my Fiction teacher Dr. Jacketti does a fantastic job at translating whatever she comes across. When we read the odes together in class Dr. Jacketti's translations helped me through the odes so much more and it was so much easier to understand. When i read alone in my room it was harder to understand but the translations helped a lot. It's great to have Dr. Jacketti as a professor in my college fiction class.

A joy of odes.......2002-04-21

Translating poetry is the most altruistic work on earth. And it is mostly done by poets, whose egos are not very small. It demands a complete devotion from the translator/poet to the text of the poet translated. If the translator succeeds then no one will pay much attention to his work, if it fails then all the criticism will go to the translator and not to the poet.
And this book is not an easy task, Neruda is venerated by many as the best poet of the twentieth century. In Spanish speaking countries he is considered a hero, and is better known than even Whitman in the U.S.
Maria Jacketti has a very special approach to these odes, she makes the English language dance to the poems, rather than try and translate literally word by word the verses of Neruda. While, theoretically, I think that this is a problematic approach (I say this as a translator myself who mostly strives to translate the exact word) she succeeds in creating vivid English versions of the poems, rather than academic translations of them.
The odes are written to the simple things in life, and celebrate the tomato as well as the soup; the table and the moon stand as equally important parts of our existence. Besides the love poems, the odes are the best part of Neruda gigantic poetic work.
This book is a good start for anyone wishing to read Neruda for the first time, but I think that those who will get the most of it are those who speak Spanish too (at least at the basic level). Anyone dealing with the translation of poetry will also learn a lot from Jacketti's approach, even if they have read the text in Spanish or have read other translations.

BTW, a out of print book of translations made by Maria Jacketti sells these days for 100$ and more at auctions, so it may be a good investment too, if you are looking for alternatives to the Nasdaq J

Full of Typos!.......1999-10-25

This collection of poetry by Pablo Neruda is excellent. However, due to the many typos in both English and Spanish, I will give this 4 stars. Typos usually annoy me greatly, but this is such a good collection that I just mark corrections in my book and keep going. It would have been much better if the content had been proofread more carefully, however. Perhaps it wasn't proofread at all...

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