Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

Mitchell, widely known for his original and definitive translations of spiritual writings and poetry, has taken the work of Neruda (1904-1973), whose poems are passionate, humorous and exceptionally accessible, and brought them to life for a whole new generation of readers. Mitchell has selected nearly 50 poems for this collection, which focuses on Neruda's mature period, beginning with Elemental Odes, published when he was 50 years old, and ending with "Full Powers, " published when he was 58. The volume is bilingual, with Neruda's original Spanish text facing Mitchell's English translation.
Excerpt from "Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon":
Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?
Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
Loving is a clash of lightning-bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). Pablo Neruda is often considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential worldwide. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.