The hands of day by Pablo Neruda and translated by William O’Daly

This is poetry from Chile.

The hands of day by Pablo Neruda translated by William O’Daly is published by Copper Canyon Press. This is a Book originally written in Spanish. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78155659272E12.

Pablo Neruda’s The Hands of Day, translated by William O’Daly, belongs to the later Neruda of elemental attention, where the world is approached through objects, labor, light, bread, stone, sea, and human touch. The title is wonderfully Nerudian because it gives the day a body. Time does not simply pass. It reaches, holds, works, and blesses. O’Daly’s translation continues the important work of making Neruda’s less narrowly famous books available to English-language readers, allowing us to see beyond the love poems most commonly circulated. The Hands of Day is generous in its orientation toward the material world. It asks the reader to remember that the ordinary is not lesser material for poetry. A hand, a tool, a morning, a surface, a daily task: all of these can become part of the poem’s immense human weather.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.