Poetry is one of my favorite art forms and the one I find the most passionate.Â
I am especially fond of works by Pablo Neruda, a Pulitzer and Nobel Literature Prize-winning, Chilean poet who died in the early 1970’s. Neruda wrote some of the world’s most scorching poems about love, loss, and being human that I have ever read. My favorite translated work of his is Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair.
Keats said, “Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.” Isn’t that wonderful?
I also find a lot of song lyrics to be beautiful poetry and, of course, beyond passionate – especially Bruce Springsteen.Â
Here’s an example of why I think passion is found not just in romance novels:
Love Sonnet XIÂ by Pablo Neruda
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.— In the original Spanish —
Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo,
y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado,
no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia,
busco el sonido liquido de tus pies en el dia.Estoy hambriento de tu sonrisa resbalada,
de tus manos color de furioso granero,
tengo hambre de la palida piedra de tus uñas,
quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almendra.Quiero comer el rayo quemado en tu hermosura,
la nariz soberana del arrogante rostro,
quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañasy hambriento vengo y voy olfateando el crepusculo
buscandote, buscando tu corazón caliente
como un puma en la soledad de Quitratue.
(For those inquiring minds out there, Quitratue is a small town in the southern reaches of Araucania in Chile. Way out in the sticks, jungle,  and mountains.)
What other art forms trip your passion trigger? Do oil paintings get you in the mood to get busy? Who are your favorite artists (painting, music, and otherwise)? Do you have a favorite work? Or even a dirty limerick?
Other than romance fiction…
…what is your 
?
It’s a solitude that my body remembers: the solitude of lovers. It’s a solitude that I would know even if I had not experienced it: a solitude that can drive one to despair if one is on one’s own. You speak to me and I alone hear you. I speak to you and you alone understand me. What I know, you already knew. What you begin, I finish. Have you noticed how beautiful the world is? Do you know how to float off into the sky? Do you want to walk, to talk, to be silent? They speak, they smile. They are silent, they smile. The sun rises over the vineyards of Bercy, and the Seine shimmers with golden reflections — my hand would not caress your body any better than this.
~~ Farewell, My Only One by Antoine Audouard
And don’t even get me started on music!!
Wow Gwen. That’s deep. I agree about Neruda, he is an excellent poet. Music is what can get me even more than a romance novel. There is some passionate music, not just popular songs, but opera, classical and so many genres that cover various tastes.
I think though movies, theatre and ballet are great too.
OMG Gwen, I freaking LURVE Pablo Neruda to Death!!!! And I have a bilingual edition (Spanish/French) of that very same collection of poems!!!!!
And that Keats quote just slayed me.
Gwen, I think I love you…
I’m exploring the works of Uruguayan poetess Delmira Agostini (sp) that Rosario (the book blogger) sent me recently. You should check her out.
Neruda is the only one I’d let compare me to wheat AND take my clothes off, LOL.
LaKaribane – All I ask is that you send flowers and call me the next day. I’m an easy lay! 😉
I’ll check out Agostini – thanks for the tip, and vicarious thanks to Rosario.
I love poetry! Especially love poetry. 🙂 Here’s a small contribution:
More and more frequently the edges
of me dissolve and I become
a wish to assimilate the world, including you . . .
This kind of hunger draws
everything into its own
space; nor can we
talk it all over, have a calm
rational discussion.
There is no reason for this, only
a starved dog’s logic about bones.
Margaret Atwood