Here's the poem for our discussion friends, apologies that it's late!
A Poet's Obligation by Pablo Neruda
"To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.
So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying 'How can I reach the sea?'
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast.
So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart."
Discussion Questions
Feel free to answer these if you're looking for something to discuss:
1. What do you think this poem means?
2. What is the relation of the title to the rest of the poem?
3. What lines or images resonated with you? Why?
4. What are some of the emotions that you feel this poem is communicating? And how do you see it doing that?
Pablo Neruda "A Poet's Obligation"
11 posts in this topic.
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I hope to say more on this later, but even after reading twice I don't have much to say yet beyond "I like this line in particular." Although the whole thing is really quite beautiful, imagery-wise.
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.
I'm not too sure about the "to whoever is cooped up...in woman," it kind of ruffles my fur considering everything else that the listener might be cooped up in is not exactly a good thing or at least in this sense seem to be portrayed as not good, although I also know Pablo Neruda's most well-known poems are love poems. But whatever.
It always seems a little arrogant to me when poets, or writers in general, really, write about being the voice of freedom or awakening the soul or anything like that, but I also realize as a reader that that's arguably a true thing. I'm just a girl and from the Midwest, so I grew up very much trying not to toot my own horn, so I think things sometimes sound arrogant to me that probably aren't actually arrogant. It's not overwhelming and annoying, anywayunlike the blatant arrogance in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Courtso it's probably just me.
Actually, it's [i]really probably just me, since the title is "A Poet's Obligation," not "What Poets Do" or anything like that - it's not like he's saying, "I, an awesome poet, open men's hearts and minds," it's more like he's saying, "as a poet, I am required to open men's hearts and minds."
I like that the cry of the sea-birds is described as "grey." On my first read-through I just kind of pictured the sea-birds as grey, but upon a closer reading I saw that he used color to describe sound, which is nice. I like to do that with smells.I hope to say more on this later, but even after reading twice I don't have much to say yet beyond "I like this line in particular."
Oops, guess I had something more to say after all. -
I haven't read or been in these discussions for a bit, so let's see how this goes. The two questions I like best out of the ones you posed, were these.
What is the relation of the title to the rest of the poem?
What lines or images resonated with you? Why?
1. A Poet's ObligationTo whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
What I'm feeling from this poem and this quote is that recurring idea where poets are paying attention to all the little things. Like think about how many naturalist poems were created during that late 1880s/early 1900s era, and how they often focused on the magnificence of the simpler things often ignored. Neruda has his usual philosophy going on but I'm still getting the reminder of how poets witness everything.
I say everything in the sense of not everything everything, but often the poems are defined by noticing what others do not. And this one is half ranting/half honored about the poet standing guard and watching all of these things happen.
It also keys into easy going lifestyle filled with sorrows of sorts but yeah I shouldn't complain like this.So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
The before mentioned sense of honor comes from this set of lines, where it starts to all change from the almost whiny perspective. Maybe that's not how other people see it but I'm just sort of like in the mood of the message is either really simple or really hard, either way the presentation is over the top.
Never thought I'd see the day where i asked for some teenage romance poetry so I could easily critique it. -
Disclaimer:
This is my first time discussing a poem here, so be ready for some awkward (because I can't interact with people and have no idea what I'm doing) and some sarcasm (mainly about the spirit of William Shakespeare and ritualistically summoning Ernest Hemingway).
Ah yes, poetry about poetry. I'm down for some meta-poems.
I rather liked the imagery in this line,
"I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup"
It's a nice feeling that he's scooping up the feel of the ocean in a little cup.
A funny thing to me that is probably not funny at all but made me smile:
"So, drawn on by my destiny,"
Ah yes, my great destiny as a poet is to bless the peasant's ears around me. How did I obtain my skill as a poet and hear my destiny, you ask? Ah, foolish human. Obviously, the ghost of William Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath showed up at my bedside as ghosts and told me I was a writer, duh. You just don't understand. Until you ritualistically summon the spirit of Ernest Hemingway to live inside of you, you can't have a destiny as profound as mine own.
My favorite part was the end. The imagery was lovely!
"And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast."
I agree with @BlueAfrica that good ol' Pablo was a little pretentious sounding. Humility is an art in of itself, my sir.
I did enjoy the message and general purpose of the poem, though. How it's the poets job to take people places that they can't travel. Whether it's a literal place, or perhaps an emotion. I thought that the idea of bottling up the sea and taking it to these trapped people was a good one.
So yeah, overall I liked the imagery and message in this poem. -
I feel like Neruda is saying that it's his obligation to entertain prisoners. I mean, this makes sense to me because I know a little backstory on him. He was a revolution writer, meaning he wrote during revolutionary times in his home country which I think was... um. it was a spanish speaking country. I wanna say it was Puerto Rico but it might have been Cuba. I googled it. It's Chile.
Anyway, I think he was under house arrest for a while due to his political movement poems. This kind of feels like a sympathy poem for those who were actually arrested.
That being said, I think I agree with @ellasnotebook [welcome to discussion!] about it sounding a little prolific and pretentious. I mean, the guy had a right to be by the time he was an old dodge though. He was the poet of the country, and is still surprisingly influential in latina/latino writing today. It's sort of like saying "No Einstein, you aren't meant to be a genius." AFTER he'd made his genius well known. Granted, I don't know when this was written, but I'm willing to give his pretentious attitude a pass XD -
Ha Lizz!
Never thought I'd see the day where i asked for some teenage romance poetry so I could easily critique it.
Love everyone's contributions so far! And welcome to the club @ellasnotebook! Glad to have you here!
@BlueAfrica - that was also one of the lines that really resonated with me too - any time you can use the word "corona" in a line though, generally just hypes up an idea.
So I didn't take this poem as being super pretentious or arrogant. I think he's just giving his perspective of what poetic obligation and truth is, which is sort of what every poet does when they write a poem (they give their perspective of what a poem is) and other's can agree or disagree. And on the other hand even if it is a bit arrogant to title this "poet's obligation", Neruda is kind of a famous poet, so if someone like Shakespeare or Poe said "hey this is what poetry is" I would say they've maybe earned the right to be a bit pretentious.
But I do see where some of you are coming from. Looking a bit into Neruda's life (the fact that he won a Nobel Prize and was possibly ultimately murdered by the gov't because of his poetry, earns him the right to complain about a lack freedom and to make claims about the purpose of poetry, if not for our lives/writing, for what he's seen in his own life)
Now as far as what the obligation he's communicating is... I think that's a bit tricky to figure out. I appreciate @Aley's context about Neruda being from Chile - where I mean there's been tons of political upheaval especially when they had the dictator Pinochet. During recent times in Chile they had the internment of tens of thousands of people, people were tortured and thousands executed by the government - for me it is hard to even relate to that sort of oppression and imprisonment then that Neruda may be referring to (just because the US has not went through that sort of upheaval in my life-time). But still I can relate to some of those images he presents of longing for freedom. Also Neruda himself was threatened with arrest and had to go into hiding for a time, so again I think he has a right to talk about poetry being a vehicle for freedom, because he has lived through a loss of freedom.
For me the main emotion that is being communicated in this poem is freedom and being unbound (or a yearning for freedom)- especially with all the really poignant nature imagery that contrasts with what one would normally associate with prison imagery. I like what Lizz said about the sort of despairing attitude that seems to be underlying it, which seems consistent with some of what people in Chile might have felt during some of the really tough political times. I think Neruda is saying poetry is supposed to allow those who are imprisoned (whether literally or figuratively) a means to escape and have a sense of freedom.
Along with those lines about the star's corona, my favorite two lines are the last ones,"So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart."
just that idea of a shuttered heart is an interesting way to express it, because in the rest of the poem it looks like the poem's audience is supposed to be a prisoner who is held against their will, but normally I would imagine a window that's been "shuttered" as being intentionally closed off. So, the audience changes from someone who has been forced to be closed off, to someone who has the power to open up or "un-shutter" their being through the freeing power of poetry.
Overall, I like this poem probably because like a few other poems we've read ("What Kinds of Times are These" and "Paradoxes and Oxymorons") it seems to give a really ambitious power to poetry. That poetry isn't just something that expresses emotion, but something that can change the world around it. -
Actually @Aley once you said he's still really influential in Latinx poetry, I thought about the fact that, well, he's probably one of the most well-known Latino poets in the English-speaking world as well, so...I mean...yeah, he really would have the right to be a bit arrogant if that was indeed what he was being.
I didn't know he was a revolution writer, but now I feel a need to go look up more about him as a person just based on that.
(I'll try to read everything else later and respond to more but Muppet Christmas Carol is nearly over and I have to shower once it's done and I have more notifications to look at.) -
Okay so I'm a little late to the discussion party but I really enjoyed this poem! I read it a couple times through this week, but haven't really had the time to add to discussion up until this point. So, here are my thoughts:
As far as the meaning of this poem goes, I interpret it as the title says, "A Poet's Obligation", which perhaps with the imagery can be taken different ways. I believe that Neruda is trying to explain how a poet can open doors for people, in a sort of way. He starts off addressing the people that are sort of trapped, such as those in prison, cooped up at home/work, or on the streets, and proceeds into the beautiful imagery. The last two lines sum it up very well in my opinion, and only adds to the point of the "poet's obligation" as it says:So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.
Again, he speaks about the shuttered heart, and I feel like this is again a metaphor for poetry. We, as poets, reach into the depths of human emotion and bring out the little details that could allow a person to feel a certain way. We allow people to release their feelings, and offer them a sort of consolidation that might not otherwise have been felt by the person, which is what I personally interpret the poem to be about.
So, that's about all I have to say. I really enjoyed this poem, and I definitely want to read more from Neruda in the future. -
@alliyah since I finally went back through and re-read everyone's responses, I liked what you had to say here
normally I would imagine a window that's been "shuttered" as being intentionally closed off. So, the audience changes from someone who has been forced to be closed off, to someone who has the power to open up or "un-shutter" their being through the freeing power of poetry.
Because it made me think of how hopeless people sometimes feel political situations arecough cough now cough coughand how closing yourself off from it because it all seems so hopeless and unchangeable is really what makes it that way - you have to be willing to open up and try to change things and fight and educate yourself, because if everyone did that then we really could make the change.
I mean, I think you meant it more as a person being maybe emotionally shuttered or shuttered in a more personal way, but considering that he was a revolutionary and a poet I think you could definitely take the use of "shuttered" to imply that people with "shuttered hearts" could "un-shutter" their way to freedom in a more literal sense and tie it into the political upheaval and the need for change. -
Totally agree with you there Blue - I also enjoy that this poem can really be taken literally of figuratively. We may be emotionally, physically, politically, or mentally bound and poetry may still provide some means or inspiration for freedom. I'm reminded of Orwell' s 1984 and how media was used to silence disent/freedom - on same way literature & poetry can change how people think so has power to unwind people's minds...
Going back to that line @BlueAfrica pointed out near the beginning where in... "woman" is listed as like synonymous with being in a factory or prison... I'm curious of anyone else has a way to interpret that less problematically? That is the one big problem/confusion I have with this poem still. Maybe it's supposed to be interpreted like "as a woman" rather than "In a woman" I'm also curious if this was originally written in English or Spanish - I'll have to look it up but that I guess could cause strange phrasing differences too. -
Oh, yeah, I didn't even think that a translation might be responsible for weird phrasing. "As a woman" would make more sense to me in a nicer way. Or, like, not a nicer way, because as a woman you're still imprisoned by society, but you know what I mean, probably.
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