A Song of Despairs: Eight Stanzas.

In class we discussed a simple yet effective technique to analyze and memorize poetry, writing it down on an index card.  I used this technique in order to study a passage from the poem A Song of Despairs by Pablo Neruda.

The memories of you emerges from the night around me

The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea

Deserted like the wharves at down

It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flowers are raining over my heart

Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of shipwrecked

In you the wars and flights accumulated

from you the wings of the song birds rose...(Neruda 55).

I memorized these first eight lines and believe these lines represent Pablo Neruda’s lover. Neruda remembered his beloved in the night and he associates the river mingling with the sea with his own tormented cries for her absence.

The first four lines, I perceived the sadness for the longing of his lost love.  I can feel his pain as his love one has left him deserted. The remaining four stanzas use metaphor to represent how torn into pieces he feel after she has left him.   He states that his heart was "a pit of debris" which gave the idea of emptiness and hollow.  His words flow with how incomplete he feels without her by his side.

 I believe this poem is deep in emotions and metaphor highlighting the tone and the diction of the poem with such intensity that makes it the most beautiful despair poem ever written. Neruda was once interview and he responded that he did not understand why this book of love and pain is continuing to be read by so many people. "It is a mournful book, but its attractiveness has not worn off..."(Guibert, "Pablo Neruda, The Art of Poetry No. 14").

"The Paris Review." Paris Review. 25 Nov. 2013 <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4091/the-art-of-poetry-no-14-pablo-neruda>.