Then Come Back: the Lost Neruda Poems by Pablo Neruda (2016)

A collection of 21 poems recently retrieved and never before published, by the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda (1904-73), translated by Forrest Gander.

Poetry Review:  We don't know if Neruda wanted the poems in Then Come Back - The Lost Neruda Poems, to be published; we know that some are unfinished. They are odds and ends written from the early '50s to 1973. We know that he didn't consider them so indispensable that he published them during his lifetime. But just as the executor for Kafka did right not to follow instructions to burn his works, so we are better off having these poems. Imagine if an unfinished Shakespeare play was found -- wouldn't the scrap be better than nothing at all? And although insufficiently famous in English-speaking countries, Pablo Neruda is considered by many to be the world's greatest poet since Shakespeare.

Neruda wrote hundreds of poems, and these won't change our opinion of him, but it's a good if slight collection. He was a magician when writing about love:

   You and I are the land full of fruit.
   Bread, fire, blood, and wine
   make up the earthly love that sears us.

Neruda was also known for his odes, and some of the poems in Then Come Back - The Lost Neruda Poems seem to be from his series of odes (odas). He writes often and fondly of his native and beloved Chile. The set closes with two distinct poems, one a humorous "ode" to the horrors of the telephone (what would he have made of mobiles?), and the other a worthy tribute to the first astronauts, noting that:

   they didn't go by themselves,
   they brought our earth,
   the odors of moss and forest ...

All in all we are lucky to have this lovely collection, Then Come Back - The Lost Neruda Poems. That said I have two small complaints. First, terribly picky: usually the untranslated and translated poems are on facing pages. Here, the poems are first printed as a group in English, and then later the poems are printed together in the original Spanish, making it difficult to read both at the same time. Second, the translation is uneven and at times awkward. Sometimes Gander perfectly captures Neruda's meaning, but at other times he varies wildly, often picking a more colorful or evocative word over Neruda's simpler choice. Every translator can be unfairly nit-picked to death, and that's not my intent, so I'll give just a single example. Gander translates "la prostituta de su traje falso," as "the hooker from her Lycra and falsies."  "Traje" can mean suit, clothes, dress, apparel, costume ... but regardless, I'm unsure whether Neruda ever used the word "Lycra." Every translator has to make difficult choices, but some in this collection were, to me, awkward and off-putting. I'm sure others would disagree with my choices.

Other than these two nit-picks, Then Come Back - The Lost Neruda Poems, is a solid addition to the master's legacy. [3.5 Stars]