Why I Love Reading Poetry Part 2
The next adventure in how I started reading poetry books for pure fun. This time Pablo Neruda makes an appearance in Texas.
I found myself in Austin, TX in the indie bookstore Book People, which is just wonderful because it is exactly what a bookstore should be--personable, full of personality and diverse in that the titles were not just there to make money. Book People welcomes browsers and makes you want to buy with the sincerity with which they display books to sell. On the second floor, the author of that great classic The True Story of the Three Little Pigs was about to speak, and below, I wandered among the staff recommendations without any thought of being tempted into a purchase.
When suddenly, there they were! Common things.
Specifically, I saw Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things.
Now, at first, I picked up the book with the same idle curiosity with which I picked up Kay Ryan's. But after flipping through and reading some of the poetry, noting that the book was a beautifully bound hardcover, had illustrations, showcased the original Spanish next to the English translation and was by Pablo Neruda, I felt honor bound to buy this book---for the sake of Austin's economy!
Really, the best way I can describe how awesome this book of poetry is is by relating it to everyday life.
After leaving Book People, Texas friend and I headed off to eat and had a rather cyclical conversation on an infinite topic that went something like this:
Me: I think tomatoes are great!
Friend: Me too! I love them in salads!
Me: Cucumbers are also fantastic in general and in salads!
Friend: You know what's also good in salads and as a food? Rice.
Me: I love rice!
Friend: Me too!
(Fast forward to a point that is later)
Me: I think we could generally agree that, even though we both love this topic and conversation, food is pretty awesome. A lot of great food exists.
Friend: You are correct!
Me: I actually think there’s a poem in this book that can help us out. It explains how awesome bread is.
And the poem by Pablo Neruda goes like this:
Bread, you rise from flour, water and fire. Dense or light, flattened or round, you duplicate the mother's rounded womb, and earth's twice-yearly swelling. How simple you are, bread, and how profound! You line up on the baker's powdered trays like silverware or plates or pieces of paper and suddenly life washes over you, there's the joining of seed and fire, and you're growing, growing all at once like hips, mouths, breasts, mounds of earth, or people's lives. The temperature rises, you're overwhelmed by fullness, the roar of fertility, and suddenly your golden color is fixed. And when your little wombs were seeded, a brown scar laid its burn the length of your two halves' toasted juncture. Now, whole, you are mankind's energy, a miracle often admired, the will to live itself. O bread familiar to every mouth, we will not kneel before you: men do no implore unclear gods or obscure angels: we will make our own bread out of sea and soil, we will plant wheat on our earth and the planets, bread for every mouth, for every person, our daily bread. Because we plant its seed and grow it not for one man but for all, there will be enough: there will be bread for all the peoples of the earth. And we will also share with one another whatever has the shape and the flavor of bread: the earth itself, beauty and love-- all taste like bread and have its shape, the germination of wheat. Everything exists to be shared, to be freely given, to multiply. This is why, bread, if you flee from mankind's houses, if they hide you away or deny you, if the greedy man pimps for you or the rich man takes you over, if the wheat does not yearn for the furrow and the soil: then, bread, we will refuse to pray: bread we will refuse to beg. We will fight for you instead, side by side with the others, with everyone who knows hunger. We will go after you in every river and in the air. We will divide the entire earth among ourselves so that you may germinate, and the earth will go forward with us: water, fire, and mankind fighting at our side. Crowned with sheafs of wheat, we will win earth and bread for everyone. Then life itself will have the shape of bread, deep and simple, immeasurable and pure. Every living thing will have its share of soil and life, and the bread we eat each morning, everyone's daily bread, will be hallowed and sacred, because it will have been won by the longest and costliest of human struggles. This earthly Victory does not have wings: she wears bread on her shoulders instead. Courageously she soars, setting the world free, like a baker born aloft on the wind..
Me: Bread is awesome.
Friend: Bread is really awesome.
And then I read the entire book from cover to cover on my flight out of Texas.
—Originally written by Sarah Dzida (October 2008)
Author’s Note: The last poetry memory takes us into Japanese nature. Read the first one here.