Love and Despair

I read Pablo Neruda's twenty love poems and a song of despair.

I wanted something out of this book. I did not go in just wanting to read it, and see what comes of it.

I wanted to know how poem-books are constructed. How many poems should one have in a book. It was research, basically.

I started reading the book, but did not feel anything. Those poems in the beginning did not do anything to me. I did not feel anything. And that's what poems are supposed to do. Make you feel stuff.

But things changed, or changed just bit by bit, by the time I reached the end of the book. The last love poem hit me like a ton of bricks.

I hope to make you, dear reader feel stuff.