noted by translators and anthologizers, but these
people were sometimes put off by the frank sexual
themes. Neruda was compared to the French sym-
bolist poets. Cohen concluded that Neruda was not
properly appreciated in the United States until the
better translations and liberal atmosphere of the
1960s made his poetry more available. In ‘‘Neruda
in English: Establishing his Residence in U.S.
Poetry,’’ in theMulticultural Review(2004), Jona-
than Cohen discussed Neruda’s reputation in the
United States as being spread mainly by poets
and translators after 1960. In translating Neruda,
American poets are renewed; Cohen wrote: ‘‘Ner-
uda became a model for poets looking for new
directions.’’ They love his daring topics, political
involvement, his leaping images.
Neruda was not widely reviewed in the United
States until after his Nobel Prize in 1971. In ‘‘Nobel
Prize at Isla Negra’’ in theNew Republic(1971),
John Felstiner asked, ‘‘Why has Neruda been an
obscure name in the United States, yet the best-
known poet of the rest of the world?’’ He concluded
it was for the same reason that the Nobel Prize came
to Neruda ‘‘ridiculouslylate.’’ It was because of
his communism. Yet Felstiner decided that the
real revolution in Neruda’s poetry is how the poet
engages the reader with the essential nature of life.
In his last twenty years, wrote Felstiner, Neruda
purged his political anger with ‘‘fervent sonnets to
hiswifeMatildeUrrutia,andhundredsofodeson
simple, concrete things.’’
In ‘‘The Poetry of Neruda,’’ a review in the
New York Timesin 1974, Michael Wood noted
that Neruda’s life and poetry paralleled the life
of his country, but even though illiterate Chil-
eans could sing or recite his poems, he must be
judged by what he left on the page. Wood argued
that Neruda’s greatest poems, which he identi-
fied as ‘‘The Heights of Macchu Picchu’’ and
Residence on Earth, were written by the time
the poet was forty-five years old. The last twenty
years of Neruda’s life were an anti-climax (this
would include theOne Hundred Love Sonnets,
which he did not discuss).
Some thirty years later, Teresa Longo com-
plained of Neruda’s American popularity in ‘‘Intro-
duction: Poetry Like Wonder Bread’’ in Pablo
Neruda and the U.S. Culture Industry(2002). She
argued that Neruda had been ‘‘romanticized’’ by
Americans who wanted to consume his ‘‘vision of
communion, community, hope and wonder.’’ She
pointed out that in the 1990s Neruda became a
media favorite as the compassionate poet of love,
with the filmIl Postino(The Postman); the follow
up CD,Poetry Suite from the Postman;andthe
play,Neruda 2000.His poems and message were
commodified and depoliticized, ironically making
money for corporations, while Neruda thought of
his poems as his gift to the people.
During his life, Neruda was controversial
because of his Communism, his sexual frankness,
utopian visions, and his shift from a sophisticated
literary style to a simplistic glorification of daily
life. In the early 2000s, however, Neruda was
accepted as the most important and influential
Latin American poet of the twentieth century.CRITICISMSusan K. Andersen
Andersen is a writer and teacher with a Ph.D. in
English literature. In this essay, she considers
Pablo Neruda’sOne Hundred Love Sonnetsin
light of both personal and universal love.
Critics frequently cite among Pablo Neruda’s
masterpiecesResidence on Earth(1935) andThe
Heights of Macchu Picchu(1945). Except for the
early fame ofTwenty Love Poems and a Song of
Despair(1924), the love poems are less frequently
seen to be among his best works, especially since
feminist readings have criticized Neruda’s macho
stance towards women. Yet it is the love poetry
that vaulted Neruda to posthumous fame after the
release of the filmIl Postinoin 1994, which glori-
fies Neruda as a poet of love. InEarth Tones: The
Poetry of Pablo Neruda,ManuelDura ́nandMar-
gery Safir claim that Neruda’s love poetry is not
just an incidental category of his body of poems;
‘‘His love poetry is a thread running through his
different works, his successive styles and periods,
unifying his whole poetic world.’’ One must con-
sider the Neruda love poetry in a larger context,
then. For Neruda, poetry itself is a love affair—
with women, words, the land, the people, and life.
One Hundred Love Sonnets(1959) demonstrates
this larger context of love.
Christopher Perriam in ‘‘Metaphorical
Machismo: Neruda’s Love Poetry,’’ inForum
for Modern Language Studies, concedes the fem-
inist claims that Neruda makes women passive
objects in the early love poems, but finds that
Matilde Urrutia altered that style.One Hundred
Love Sonnets names Matilde specifically and
makes her a partner in the love story they write
together. He confers creative powers on her inSonnet LXXXIX