4.3 Love & Loss in Poetry

Neruda's love

Pablo Neruda (Chile, Nobel) wrote passionate love poetry. In sonnet and free verse, he binds the beloved to nature — earth, sea, and light — making love and landscape one.

Garcilaso's Renaissance sonnet

Garcilaso de la Vega's 'Soneto XXIII' ('En tanto que de rosa y azucena') is a carpe diem poem: enjoy youth and beauty before time and age destroy them.

Poetic form

A soneto (sonnet) has 14 lines; the carpe diem ('seize the day') theme recurs across Spanish poetry, tying love to the passage of el tiempo (time).

Key terms

Pablo Neruda

Chilean Nobel poet of passionate love

Garcilaso de la Vega

Renaissance poet; 'Soneto XXIII' (carpe diem)

soneto

a 14-line poem

carpe diem

'seize the day' — enjoy youth before time passes

Love + nature

Neruda fuses the beloved with the natural world

Try an AP-style question

Garcilaso de la Vega's sonnets often express…

1. idealized love and melancholy
2. scientific discovery
3. comic satire
4. political revolution