illustrations from ‘art of birds’

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animals, art, art of birds, birds, drawing, jack schmitt, jack unruh, pablo neruda

I recently shared a couple poems from the 1985 illustrated edition of Pablo Neruda’s poetry collection Art of Birds. I guess I got lucky last year, scoring an old library copy for less than $20, because prices on any edition of this book are now pretty steep. Here are four of Jack Unruh‘s bird drawings that accompany Jack Schmitt’s translations of the poems.

black-necked swan

andean condor

many-colored rush-tyrant

chimango caracara

pablo neruda: mebird

Tags

art of birds, birds, pablo neruda, poems, poetry

It looks like several people enjoyed the previous post featuring a poem about a bird from Pablo Neruda’s book, Art of Birds. I mentioned that all but the first and last poems in the collection are about one specific species of bird, but the second-to-last poem takes a liberty with that idea. In it, having painted dozens of magically expressive verbal portraits of birds, Neruda considers himself as a bird.

MeBird (Pablo insulidae nigra)

I am the Pablo Bird,
bird of a single feather,
a flier in the clear shadow
and obscure clarity,
my wings are unseen,
my ears resound
when I walk among the trees
or beneath the tombstones
like an unlucky umbrella
or a naked sword,
stretched like a bow
or round like a grape,
I fly on and on not knowing,
wounded in the dark night,
who is waiting for me,
who does not want my song,
who desires my death,
who will not know I’m arriving,
who will not come to subdue me,
to bleed me, to twist me,
or to kiss my clothes,
torn by the shrieking wind.

That’s why I come and go,
fly and don’t fly but sing:
I am the furious bird
of the calm storm.

pablo neruda: austral blackbird

Tags

art of birds, austral blackbird, birds, pablo neruda, poems, poetry

Last year, I got an illustrated hardcover edition of Pablo Neruda’s book, Art of Birds, translated by Jack Schmitt with drawings by Jack Unruh. It was a bit of an accident, since I thought I was ordering a bilingual edition, and I wish this volume included the original Spanish. But even without the originals, this is a very cool addition to my Neruda collection. Every poem (with the exception of the first and last) is about one specific species of bird, and many of them are right up there with Neruda’s best and more well-known poems.

The following poem is about the austral blackbird, which I had never heard of before, so here is a link to read a little more about this bird, see a picture, and listen to 30 seconds of its unique song.

Austral Blackbird (curaeus curaeus)

Whoever looks at me face-to-face
I shall kill with two knives,
with two furious lightning bolts:
with two icy black eyes.

I was not born for captivity.

I have a wild army,
a militant militia,
a battalion of black bullets:
no seeded field can withstand.

I fly, devour, screech, and move on,
rise and fall with a thousand wings:
nothing can stop my determination,
the black order of my feathers.

My soul is a burned log,
my plumage pure coal:
my soul and suit are black:
that’s why I dance in the white sky.

I am the Black Floridor.